


Creep

by Diaph



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alpha/Omega, Dom Lexa, Dom/sub, Dominance, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Smut, F/F, Falling In Love, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Light BDSM, Mistress, Slow Burn, Sub Clarke, Submission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2017-10-12
Packaged: 2018-09-09 08:20:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 66,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8883670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diaph/pseuds/Diaph
Summary: Clarke has a broken understanding of her place within the world after being rescued from her last dominant, and the only way her caseworker, Anya, can save her newest ward is to place her with her best friend Lexa Woods: the troubled last-surviving member of the powerful Woods family, and probably the most powerful dominant in the entire state too.Only time will tell if they will be able to rescue one another from their ever-present pasts...COMPLETE





	1. Chapter 1

The Woods' home was the grandest in Bennington and it didn't take much to earn that title, tucked away at the top of a gated road that slipped off from President Ford Avenue, the country pile existed in undisturbed peace with its ostentatious gardens and fixtures tended to by a skeleton crew of staff that no one in town particularly knew well enough to exchange anything more than pleasantries with. 

You prefered it that way; there was a time when the people in the town knew your family well. A time when nearly every family within a five mile radius converged on the Woods Estate for one of your father's famous cookouts. Though you'd never admit it, the memories always left you with a fond feeling in the pit of your stomach and an aching gnaw in your chest.

But locked away in your ivory tower, looking out onto the world through crystalline windows that were high enough to see over the walls that surrounded your humble estate, this was the prison where you kept yourself now — working on your best days and dying on your worst. 

There were much worse prisons to decay in, you decided in the moments you questioned your self-imposed exile from reality. The high garden walls that surrounded the estate were far enough away not to strangle you or your staff with proximity, but close enough to serve as a reminder that you don't have to worry about someone lurking on to the property with ill intention ever again.

The tepid knock to your study door disturbs your purposeful silence and it irks you enough to earn a little sigh. "Come in," you order the attendant with a measured tone, never once turning from your position, sat in your chesterfield office chair appraising the gardens outside of your window whilst the door creaks open behind you.

"Ma'am," Lincoln clears his throat and pokes his head around the great oak door frame. "Are you busy right now?" he asks you softly.

"I'm always busy." you reply with same short pithy tone you've proven masterful in.

"Anya is downstairs, she says she's not leaving until you see her." Lincoln mused in reply, you hear his footsteps wander further into the study and you can feel his eyes burning into the back of your head, waiting and doing little else, but silence is all you offer him.

He waited longer than you thought he would before feeling the need to disturb your silence once more with verbosity, "Should I send her in?" he added and the twiddle of his thumbs was audible to your ears.

With that you roll your eyes and swivel in your chair to face him. "It would seem you've already decided that for me, given that I explicitly told you never to disturb me unless absolutely necessary." you groan and feel your brow furrow into mountain ridges. "It really is a simple request." you remind him.

"Sorry," he offers you a slight shrug with his big lumbering shoulders, "I can send her away if it would please you."

"Yes, it would please me—"

Before you can finish the sentence you hear the familiar grating sniggers of your best friend and the door to your study suddenly swings open a little wider. Lincoln is no match for her, it's one of the things you resentfully love about Anya the most, the incomparable way she gets what she wants every single time. "Well, don't you know how to break a girl's heart." she pulled her lips into an exaggerated frown and all you can do is grind your jaw in frustration.

"Well I suppose you better sit down." you gesture to the chair in front of your desk, "That will be all, thank you,Lincoln." you glare at your valet and he offers you an apologetic look, closing the doors behind himself.

Anya sits in front of you expectantly, arms crossed, sagging boneless against the back of her chair with paperwork already stacked neatly in front of her on the mahogany surface. In another life, your best friend would have made an excellent second-in-command on the company board of directors, but you can't help admiring her for choosing a calling that was so far beneath her station; working as a white collar stiff for the the Department of Submissive Rehabilitation.

"How big of a donation do you need?" you ask, already digging through the draw at the side of your desk for your cheque book and fountain pen. "Are you raising money for a new hospital or a scholarship programme this time?" you enquire, licking the end of your pen and slipping your reading glasses over the bridge of your nose.

"Nothing like that." she shakes her head and sets her clasped hands over the paperwork, "I have a much bigger request this time. I know it's short notice and I know you don't like to be disturbed up here but I wouldn't come to you if I had any other option." she said exasperatedly and tucked her hair behind her ears.

"I don't know how many more of your big requests I can take… cutting the ribbon at your precious library opening was the cherry on the cake."

Anya's eyes narrow and her nose shrivels up into that precarious look of disgust that is quintessentially Anya and all you can do is brace yourself for the oncoming verbal storm. "That was your library opening!" she reminds you loudly, "It literally had your name on the side of the damn building!"

Her words are enough to make you wince at the memories of the press practically climbing over each other to ask you questions you didn't care to hear; children with their sticky disgusting hands reaching out for handshakes; Anya breathing down your neck telling you every five minutes to smile and pretend you're having a good time. The battle scars of your last public outing were well and truly carved into you.

"All I'm saying is you were pretty set on me going to the damn thing." you groan and lean back in your chair, "Who's stupid idea was it to even put my name on the side of that library?"

"Yours. It was your stupid idea." Anya chides you and folds her suit jacket over her lap, "Look for the sake of brevity I'm just going to cut to the point."

"Thank god."

"In this folder," Anya ignores your sarcasm and pushes forward a brown document. "Is the case file for a girl I'm working with and I need your help." she said slowly and enunciated every word clear as day so there is no misunderstanding of how crucial your assistance is.

"Sure, whatever, if I sponsor your submissive do I get a picture of her running around on a farm somewhere every month and a newsletter about how well she's doing?" you raise your brow and try terribly to temper the snarky little grin that's eating away at your cheeks.

"Lexa!" Anya bit and ran a hand through her thick mane, "If you read a sentence in that report of what this girl has gone through!" she tempered her tone and paused, "She was being rehabilitated at Arkadia House but she's on her final strike — she's completely terrified of men, she's violently attacked all of the male staff and if she so much as farts in the direction of a floor warden they're going to ship her out to a secure unit."

Well, I do like a girl with some attitude in her, you can't help but think to yourself with a small smile that you hide behind the knuckles you've now set between your teeth. "I'm not sure how this has anything to do with me?" you reply, slightly more curious than you would like.

"I know this girl's case back to front and she needs a female dominant—"

"Anya!" you growl and lift your hand to halt the conversation, "How can you even ask me what you're about to ask me?"

"What choice do I have?" Anya concedes and tosses the dossier she's created on this faceless submissive in front of you. you're so furious your saliva turns into gasoline and your words dissolve into nothing more than an expression of sheer frustration.

There's still a family portrait that hangs on the bearing wall with Costia tucked underneath your chin grinning, you can feel her staring at you, half agony and half disgust that you would desecrate her memory like this.

"—She's the worst case I've ever handled, Lexa. Please. I'm begging you."

"Then you claim her if you want to rehome her so badly!" you spit.

"Oh, I'm sure Octavia would be thrilled about that." her face dissolves into a vacant expression, "Lexa, you are the only other female dominant I know this side of the state line and I am out of options. I know if you met this girl, you would like her."

"Really? Because it sounds a lot like the operative part of that statement was that I'm the only female dominant you know for two hundred miles and you're all out of options." you sour and push the dossier back towards her, "Thank you for stopping by Anya but I think our meeting is over." you say matter of fact, pulling yourself out of your executive chair.

"You need someone, Aleksa."

"Excuse me?"

She looks up at you with those pitiful dark eyes that see through your facade expertly and you feel sickened. "You need someone." she repeats a little more firmer, "Whether it be just for company, I don't know, but what I do know is that I have a submissive who needs somewhere to stay with someone who can appreciate what it's like to have everything ripped out from underneath you in the blink of an eye… the department allows for dominants to make a non-permanent claim over troubled submissives; if it doesn't work out I will drive her to the secure unit myself on Monday." she finally breathes and pushes the dossier back in front of your nose. "Her name is Clarke." she softly smiles and coaxes you to take the form set in her hand.

Scratched is the skin on your palm where you've dug your nails into half crescent moons right into the flesh; you breathe a breath that puffs out your chest with a violent kind of concession because you know once again Anya will get what she wants the way she always does and you can barely handle your merciless fury that she knows how to press your buttons so well.

You snatch the piece of paper out of Anya's hand and sign on the dotted line, "If this ends badly, on your head be it." you seethe and push the document forward. "She can stay here temporarily until you find a good home." you add as an afterthought.

She filed it away methodically in the briefcase and organised her paperwork back into some semblance of order and one document was pulled back out with a peculiar look on her face, the brown case folder from earlier, she held it tentatively in her hand. 

"Just in case you ever want to know where she comes from." Anya nods and pushes it back towards you.

"When do I come and pick her up?"

"No need, she's outside." Anya replies so nonchalantly you do a double take. "Clarke?" she calls over her shoulder.

"Are you kidding me right now?" you growl and wrap your arms around the spot on your shirt where a drop of mustard stained it yellow over lunch. Hardly the most becoming of outfits for someone to see you in. "She was outside the entire time?" you hiss.

"I know... can you imagine how uncomfortable the ride home would have been if you said no?" Anya chuckled and shook her head with a little relieved sigh. "Clarke?" she called a little louder.

The door opens and you lose your breathe. Thin bruised arms, dirt worn into her skin, hair matted into long thick ropey pieces of hair, but all you see are her eyes, they're as blue as cornflower. 

"Ah. Clarke…" Anya stands from her chair and moves towards the submissive and you watch enthralled and ashamed as she flinches away from your friend like a doe on wobbling knees. Anya stops just shy of a metre or two and softens the infliction of her voice. "This is Lexa. You're going to stay here with her for a while and I'll be back on Monday to check in with you all, okay?"

Clarke stares at her with pleading eyes not to be left here, she won't let Anya get anywhere near her but she makes it clear with sharp little looks that Anya is the only dominant in the room she trusts. You're fine with that, the less attachment the better.

"You know I wouldn't let anything happen to you, right?" Anya lowers her voice and she just about nods. "My friend is a lost cause… do you think you can take care of her for a while?" she lowers her voice and earns a perplexed look. "She might look tough but trust me, total pussycat."

"That's enough, really." you clear your throat and glare.

"Fine! Fine." Anya shrugs in concession, "If you need anything call me." Anya nods at you one last time and scooches past the line that marked Clarke's wide berth of personal space towards the doors. Seconds later she's gone and you're left alone with this tiny thing dressed in nothing more than an oversized threadbare shirt that falls just above her knees.

It's been so long since you've had a new person around you that you find yourself pausing and stumbling over something to say; it's an unusual feeling and so you keep quiet for a moment and hold a pensive face, hoping that she isn't intuitive. 

"Well, you don't look all that frightening." you can't help but cock your head and appraise her with a little smile.

She is as still as a statue — she doesn't move a single inch and for a second you wonder whether this is all an elaborate joke; her skin is dirty and mottled with blue bruises and she's hunched over like she's dying and this is not how you envisioned your Thursday evening going. You try to distract yourself with these little novel thoughts because the reality of being sat with an objectively very pretty girl, dirty and bruised to the high heavens, head downcast to the floor because she's no doubt terrified of you leaves a sickly film in your mouth that you can't swallow off.

The mug falls to the floor before you even notice it was teetering on the edge of your desk in the first place, you must have knocked it with your elbow absentmindedly and before you can catch it, hot coffee splashes over your lap and the ceramics shatter across the floor — no doubt staining the solid oak furnishings with what's left of the black drink. 

"Shit!" you yell and leap out of the chair, dabbing your trousered legs with a napkin as the stinging sensation of black coffee scalding your thighs slowly ebbs away.

Napkin pressed against the damp spots on your black trousers, eyeing up the broken shards of mug on the floor, you practically forget the girl is even there until you glance up and catch the sight of her white knuckles balled into fists so tight her arms shake, in fact no, all of her is shaking.

You've frightened her. It dawns on you and an immeasurable guilt fells you like a bolt of lightning hitting an old oak tree in the forest. 

"Clarke?" you say as softly as you can muster and move around your desk. "Clarke?" you try and tentatively coax the girl once again into so much as looking at you.

Her head is hanging like the muscles in her neck don't exist and all you can focus on is the way her knees knock and tremble against one another, hands clenched, shaking and breathing breaths big enough to make her chest shudder.

You get maybe a clean six feet away from her before her head snaps up and her wide cornflower eyes lock onto you like a rabbit caught in a bear trap. "Okay, okay," you hold your hands up and stand as still as she did just a minute ago. "Don't worry I won't come any closer." 

She softens into the reassurance of your words and releases the breath she's been holding and you can't remember the last time you played this game. You're above that now. Ridden of any need to participate in the illusion that you care even slightly what people think about you, yet you can't stop yourself curling inward, softening your infliction, making yourself tiny to save her any suspicion of your intent.

"I'm sorry that I frightened you, Clarke, I accidentally knocked a mug of coffee over and burned myself. It's no excuse for cursing... I must have given you a very bad first impression. I'll be much more careful about raising my voice around you, I promise." you say the words slowly with a dulcet tone you buried long ago with Costia. "Are you hungry or thirsty at all?"

Her face is vacant and she doesn't give you a response, her trembling arms slowly start to soothe themselves beneath your dulcet words and you take it as a sign that she's listening at least.

"I bet Anya's offered you nothing to eat," you laugh and shake your head, tucking wispy bits of dark hair off of your face. "It's not her fault I guess. Octavia eats like a bird and Anya's too wrapped around her little finger to care." you muse out loud and you're not quite sure why you're telling her these little bite-size facts, but they must be working, her fists slowly unravel themselves finger by finger.

"Would you like to take a walk with me? Sometimes when I have things on my mind it helps if I stretch my legs." you ask and dig your hands into your trouser pockets, waiting, though her response doesn't come. "You would really be doing me a favor... I could do with letting my pants dry out." you lift a brow.

She looks at you with a malleable kind of curiosity and you see yourself in the reflection of her eyes; you look kinder, more in control than you've looked in a while. It dawns on you that she's the first new person you've said more than a sentence to of your own volition in longer than you can remember.

"You don't have to talk to me if you don't want to." you sigh, "Just nod your head if you'd like to take a walk and I can show you the house."

You earn a timid little nod. Eyes widening, lip curled into your teeth, you bite your mouth so you don't grin like a fool.

You move to the door and hold it open for her. She stares at you for a moment, uncertain on what to do, either that or she's testing your limits. She'll be waiting for a while, you think and smile. If there's one thing you've grown accustomed to on the estate it's the sound of acquired silence and you know you can hold it long past her concession point until she walks through the door you hold stretched back.

Three minutes and eight seconds. That's how long it takes until she takes tentative wary steps forward and walks within the wingspan of your grasp through the door. 

"Good." you praise her promptly as she passes you, "I bet I can beat you, I mean, win at a game of I spy. You know… if you want to play on our walk?" you nearly hit yourself in the mouth for your stupid choice of words.

 


	2. Chapter 2

There's something beautifully macabre about the gardens.

They were your mother's pride and joy. Father had the best landscapers in Europe flown here to craft her a sea of flowers to lose herself in with her favourite books over worn picnic blanket stretched out over the lawn. Then you were born and the classic novels were replaced with comics and she would lead you by the hand deep into the maze of hedges and you'd fall asleep in your mother's lap whilst she thread daisies through your hair and told you stories of how her garden would be Costia's to take care of one day.

Somehow everything had changed except for this damn garden, and though you hated it, stared at it resentfully through the west windows every time you graced the staircase — you could never bring yourself to send the groundskeepers away.

Today the hatred was less palpable though, Clarke trails far behind you; disinterested in whatever it is you're blabbering about, arms wrapped around herself, still not talking but you keep walking and muttering on anyway because the more you talk the more you see the corners of her mouth occasionally twitch into some kind of expression other than vacancy. You've been walking around and taking in the views together for hours now and she still hasn't spoken, you don't mind too much, it's actually quite pleasant not having someone else's narrative loudly filling your head every few seconds.

"—personally my favourite flower is the lillie. Anya makes fun of me for that, she says it's too morbid. I don't mind though. I just wish there were more lilies in the garden but my mother's favorite colour was pink," you pause and cover your mouth as if the past tense verb scalds your tongue, "anyway... as you can see my father was smitten." you gesture to the sea of pink flowers before you both.

You turn and her eyes have grown wide; they're not skittish or frightened this time, it's different, you appraise her for barely a moment and quickly come to the realisation that it's disbelief, it's etched into her quirked brows and pursed lips. You wonder if her disbelief is founded in the idea that a dominant could ever love a submissive enough to raise a sea of flowers from the dirt for her. It leaves you with a strange feeling, because that's the only idea you were ever taught.

You tilt your head in her direction, "Do you like them?" you ask softly.

She throws her eyes down to the floor and you watch her lips purse and pull with uncertainty, nervous and unsure on what answer you want from her.

"It's okay," you take a step closer and she flinches. "Clarke, look at me," you tell her a little firmer, "I want you to look at me please." you repeat with that dulcet tone and she doesn't obey you.

It leaves you annoyed and that in turn leaves you disgusted with yourself that you would feel anything on such a primitive level for a submissive who is not yours, but annoy you it does.

"Will you come sit down with me?" you change the subject and gesture to the outdoor furniture tucked away inside a small cove of ivy and to your surprise she follows you timidly to the table. "I'm going to explain to you the rules of my home now, if you have any questions please wait until I'm finished speaking to raise your voice," you say as you sit down, "though I don't think that will be too much of a problem, will it?" you glance at her and offer a warm smile.

You swear you see her nod, but you wonder whether it's your own imagination.

She stands at the furthest corner of the table away from you and you pause for a moment, willing her to sit down. It irks you slightly and earns a little tepid sigh that escapes your nostrils as you wait for her to accept your hospitality. "Clarke, sit." you tell her firmly but with the softest infliction you can manage.

You barely finish your sentence before she sinks to her bare knees on the gravel, hands clasped in front of her lap, head hung low, shoulders shivering nervously and the wind escapes your chest. You can't breathe. The sight in front of you throttles you and all you feel is the guilt weighing in your gut like a stone that's pressing up into your lungs.

"No!" you gasp and immediately hate yourself for frightening her again, "No, honey, don't kneel on the gravel you'll hurt your knees." you repeat softly, closing your eyes to afford yourself a brief moment of not having to see her little shoulders tremble. "Guests in my home sit at my table."

You stand up slowly and offer her a hand to help herself up with, she doesn't take it and you don't force her to. Instead you move around the table and pull out a chair for her, "Please sit at the table?" you encourage her.

She looks up at you, peers right into your eyes and holds her gaze for more than a second and her eyes are so beautiful and so sad, she looks between you and the chair and the fear emanates from her as if she's taking orders from two warring sides in her head.

"Your old master only let you kneel, didn't he?" you sigh regretfully and she nods her head. You feel nothing but the deepest sympathy for this sweet little thing in front of you with her matted blonde hair and dirty skin. You hate Anya for involving you in this, you firmly decide, because you're a sucker for a good sob story.

"Well, can you scooch up and make room?" you groan inwardly and get down on your hands and knees a meter or two from her position, she stares at you and watches your every movement. "If you won't sit at the table, then I'll just have to kneel with you on the ground." you explain and try not to hiss at the sensation of gravel digging into your knees for fear of frightening her again.

Her eyes widen into concern, cheeks burning red, lips between her teeth.

"Do you not want us to kneel on the gravel anymore? I mean it's pretty uncomfortable. I think my knees might get scratched but if this is where you want me to sit…"

Ashamed and disgusted as she is, she quickly gets up off the ground and stands awkwardly, unsure on the proper protocol. You get up off the gravel too and sigh with relief that your little plan worked, but you watch a violent kind of embarrassment take over her, probably at the concept of having made a dominant kneel, she pinches the inside of her wrist until half crescent moons dig into her skin and her cheeks puff with frustration.

"Don't do that." you tell her firmly and nod down to her pinched skin, she quickly releases her grip and lets her hands sag to her thighs as she takes a seat at the table. "Good. Thank you. Now, do you remember what my name is?"

She nods.

"Good, that's very good that you were paying attention," you praise her and lean back in your chair. "You might hear the house staff call me all kinds of things like Ma'am or Miss but it's very important to me that you just call me Lexa. I'm not your dominant and you don't have to call me anything other than my name."

You take a breath and though she doesn't respond you're confident she's listening intently to your words.

"I ask that you treat my staff with the due respect you would treat myself with," you rattle off and doubt that will be a problem, the girl is selectively mute after all. "I'd also like for you to join me for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day so I know for my own peace of mind you've eaten."

At that she throws you a curious look and you can confidently assume her master never let her eat around him either.

"Do you remember the different parts of the house I showed you?" you press on and in turn she gives a weak little nod. "You can go wherever you want and do whatever you like during the day but you are never to go in the room at the end of my corridor under any circumstances." you enunciate the words slowly and inflict the operative verbs so there's no misunderstanding. "Do I make myself clear?"

She nods once more.

"I er—" you pause, unsure on how to discuss this with ease. "I have men who work on the premises," you force the awkward words out and look away for a moment. "Is that going to be a problem?"

You glance back at her frame and her knuckles are dug into the side of the arm rests.

She's terrified.

"I will ask Lincoln and Nyko to stay very, very far away from you. I will keep you safe, I promise you." you whisper and offer her a warm little look that dampens her resolve just slightly. "I had my dinner before you got here… do you want me to ask the kitchen to make you something?" you change the subject.

She looks to the ground and you take that as a no.

"If you change your mind, just let somebody know and you can have something to eat. Ice cream is normally my favorite but try and keep that to yourself… I like to pretend I'm above indulgence." you grin playfully.

Her mouth twitches into a smile.

She smiles and you think you might die.

Blushing and suddenly choked for words, you tap your fingers over your knee to serve as a little reminder that she isn't Costia. Costia is gone. Costia is dead. It gnaws at your heart and blisters your insides but you have to tell yourself these things because Clarke isn't yours and your stomach has no right to tie itself in knots when she smiles.

"It's getting late," you muse, "I'll take you back to the main house and let you get settled in your room. I'll be in my study for a while, perhaps if you don't feel too tired we can read a book together? It's been a long time since the books in the library have seen any attention…" you trail off and walk towards the main house with Clarke in quick pursuit behind you.

There's a violent gnawing pain in your chest and you can't decide whether it's because you've missed this; someone listening to your wispiest thoughts or because you hate yourself for taking this girl into your home. It fuels your pace towards the house. Clarke follows and you can hear her footsteps behind you falling in sync and though it shouldn't please you that she's mirroring your movements, most likely subconsciously, you know it's a symptom that you're doing something right.

It's the first time you feel like you've done something right in longer than you can remember.

Finally, barely a hair out of place on your head even with the briskness of your walk, proximity sets off the security light and Indra quickly opens the door to let you and the dordling back into the western entrance of the property.

"Nice evening for a walk…" you surmise and nod your head, blood rushing to your cheeks as the warmth of the house envelopes you. Indra is staring at the girl behind you, watching curiously, brows raised.

"Indra this is Clarke," you step out of the way so she can get a better look at your visitor, "she's going to be staying with us for a while."

"Mmm," she makes a long noise and nods, sniffing and pulling a small face at the smell of musky sweat and dirt. "I'll make her some dinner Miss Lexa." she bows her head at you.

"Thank you but that won't be necessary." you assure your head of household, you can feel the pressure change in the room as Clarke breathes a sigh of relief that Indra isn't staring anymore. "She'll eat when she's ready." you shrug your shoulders and take a glass from the cupboard.

"What are your instructions for this evening?"

You think for a moment as you grab the bottle of single malt that puts you down for bed most nights, "Get Clarke settled." you state and pour yourself half the amount of whiskey you normally would. "Indra... a word." you beckon her closer. "Clarke is very fragile and quiet..." you whisper and wonder how to phrase what you mean.

"Say no more. I'll take care of everything." Indra pats your shoulder and in turn you offer her a thankful smile.

"Very good." you sigh and tuck the bottle of whiskey under your arm, "Clarke, I'm going to my study now to finish my work. Indra is going to take care of you and make sure you're comfortable. If you like, ask her to bring you to the study and we can read together if you want."

At that Clarke's lips curl into something that looks like a smile again. It quickly disappears. She's a bundle of frayed nerves, rubbing her fingers, looking at the floor in your presence. Existing with the whole world on her shoulders.

"Indra," you look over your shoulder and earn an acknowledging hum, "Be very gentle with Clarke, don't raise your voice and see to it that some of my clothes are laid out for her." you glance back at her dirty oversized t-shirt. "Clarke is to ask you out loud to be taken to the study if she wishes to read tonight." you add thoughtfully, "Guests in my house use their voices." you tell Clarke softly and do all you can to stop yourself lifting her chin with your fingers.

With that Indra takes control and beckons Clarke to follow her upstairs to the guest room. She's already started muttering small things about a hot bath and soap with an infliction harsher than what you'd like to hear but Clarke seems content enough to follow her so you let it slide.

It's a short climb of the stairs to the study, you open the door to find your editorial drafts laid out neatly for you waiting for approval so the magazines you begrudgingly own can set to work on next week's covers. It's cool weather tonight, though the warmth of the house has crept up your back and sat on your shoulders. You shrug your jacket off on the couch and tend to the editorials lined out for you... it's a tempestuous relationship at best, you stay out of the way as much as you can, and in return the twelve publications you own and their editors-in-chief keep the work pile on your desk as slim as possible.

Often not as slim as you'd like.

"Lincoln," you holler as you catch his shadow move past your door. "The girl who came with Anya earlier," you gesture off towards the west wing with your hand, still flicking through the covers.  "She's staying with us as a guest from Arkadia House and I need you to be… careful." you explain as tersely as possible.

"I don't follow."

"She's frightened of men." you answer and glance up, "I want to make this as easy as possible for her so if you wouldn't mind, please make sure you and Nyko keep your distance."

He gives you a shallow nod and looks towards the leather chair facing your desk, "May I join you for a moment?"

"By all means."

"Did you know my mother came from Arkadia House when she joined the household?"

You sit back in your chair, a little surprised, not that you cared much about the goings on of the people who lived downstairs but you remembered Lincoln's mother fondly. She was your nanny for many years before a bout of cancer took her away from him far too soon. It was how he came to your family's service, your father collected him from the social worker and took him in as the family's ward after her passing, swore an oath that the boy would have a place in your home until he found somewhere else he'd rather be.

"I didn't know that." you reply a touch late.

"She must have had something awful happen to her to end up at Arkadia House, Miss."

"I suppose you're right," you nod thoughtfully, glancing at the brown coffee-stained folder Anya gave you earlier. "Do you think your mother was happy here after she went to Arkadia House?" you ask curiously.

Though the subject was sad his mouth widened into a beaming smile, "My mother said working here were the happiest years of her life. You, your family, she said your dad doubled her pay at Christmas because he wanted her to be able to buy me as many presents for christmas as your parents bought you." he chuckled at the memory, "In fact, I still have the Nintendo 64 she got me that year."

You feel a little relieved smile creep up your cheeks, "I think I remember your mom forcing you to let me play Zelda with you." you can't help but grin.

"Eh," he shrugs and sags boneless into the chair, "I gave you an unplugged controller but you were too little to notice." he teases and you roll your eyes, there's a pause that follows but he reads your mind masterfully. "However long your guest is with us, Miss Lexa, we'll make this a happy place for her. Don't you worry about that." he assures you, and it's times like this you just want to hug the big lug.

There's an ear piercing squeal that radiates through your house, it rumbles on and it rumbles on and you wonder what the ungodly sound is because it's inhuman; unlike anything you've heard before. Then it dawns on your quite suddenly whose lungs the curdling screams no doubt belong to. Lincoln shoots from his chair and all you can do is grab his hand to stop him running off.

"Don't!" you barely get the words out in time, "It'll make it worse." you bristle and run towards what you're certain will be a swinging banshee tearing your guest bedroom apart brick from morter. "Make sure Nyko doesn't come this way!" you growl at Lincoln over your shoulder with foresight that even you were impressed with.

The guest bedroom is two doors down from your master suite, approximately two flights of stairs above your study, and suddenly you're certain Everest has been scaled with greater ease than the distance separating you from your new guest. 

The screaming is an endless cacophony and you can just about hear Indra's coarse voice gnashing behind the bedroom door that you practically pull of its hinges.

The bedroom is empty save for a slither of light creeping out from the bathroom door and your stomach ties itself in knots imagining what kind of trouble your poor ward has found herself in.

"Get… up…" you hear Indra huffing.

You open the door and with it your heart falls into the pit of your stomach and nobody needs to explain to you what's happened, it's all quite clear. The bath is still running, bubbles and all, the fresh clothes are laid out on the side table by the sink and Clarke is curled up in a tiny paralysed shape in the corner screaming a vile sound.

"That's enough!" you can't help but hiss and your housekeeper immediately retracts her hands from Clarke's wrists. Livid doesn't even come close to describing the feeling burrowing into your spine. It sets you alight in a way that frightens you of what you might do.

"Ma'am—"

"Get out!" you order her with gnashing teeth, "I don't know what the hell is going on here but if I ever see you handle a guest of mine like that again…" you can't even get the words out, your chest is shuddering and your words have turned to gasoline in your mouth. "Get out." you order her.

You close the bathroom door as Indra leaves and you feel sick.

The screaming has largely stopped except for long drawn out aching whimpers that rattle her chest. Clarke gasps for breath, aches for it, gulps it in but it's not enough. The dominant within you has largely taken control and you're just a prisoner watching things transpire; you want to take control, you want to bundle her in your arms and hush her and rub the length of her spine until she melts in your arms.

You hold on to enough self restraint to keep yourself rooted to the spot, you keep yourself there, watching and dying until the timing is right to speak.

"Clarke," you say softly after a moment, "it's okay, Indra's gone now, I sent her away." you explain and set your knuckles between your teeth. "I'm going to take a step closer, okay? I'm just going to turn the faucets off before they overflow."

You move closer to turn the faucets off and you sit on the edge of the bath, wishing and waiting until she calms down.

Her arms are wrapped around her head and she cowers from you, shaking and mumbling noises that you can't quite distinguish into words, her t-shirt is hiked up to her waist and you imagine Indra running the bath and then you stop yourself for fear of where your mind will venture. Did she try to take Clarke's shirt off? You wonder, did she grab her wrist and pull her towards the bath?

"Clarke," you clear your throat and twiddle your thumbs. "I should have explained to Indra that you don't like to be touched and I should have told her to check with you first to see if you wanted any help. I'm here now and you're safe, okay? No one is going to make you do anything you don't want to do."

She looks at you with bright blue cornflower eyes that peek through a gap between her forearms, she's trembling, blinking and finding her bearings.

"Your name is Clarke." you say it slowly and enunciate her name with a soft kind of punctuation. "You came here with Anya this afternoon from Arkadia House — you're staying with me, Lexa, and I don't know what happened just now but I sent Indra far away. You're safe and I'm not going to let anyone hurt you, okay?"

You look down at the puddle and suddenly avert your eyes.

You know she must have seen you notice because she cowers with her body curled inward and her arms wrapped over her head and what you interpret as embarrassment you quickly realise is her protecting herself in case you start beating her.

"You're a good girl," you breathe and force the dusty words out of your chest, "You're a very, very good girl and you haven't done anything bad — I'm not going to punish you. Now, would it be okay if help you stand up? I don't want you sat on the floor, you don't sit on the floor in this house, remember?" you hush her with a strained dulcet tone that holds back the heat in your throat.

"I—" Clarke rasps, clearing her throat, staring at you carefully with big blue eyes. "I— I'm s-sorry, I didn't mean, I'm sorry, so sorry." she strings the words together and you hear the months of inactivity within her voice. "It was an accident — p-please d-don't… Miss..."

"I'm not going to hurt you and you don't have to call me Miss Lexa." you promise her tenderly, "Would you like to take a bath?" you gesture with your hand as she pulls herself up from the ground. "I can give you some privacy..."

"I—" she pauses and fumbles on her words, never once looking you in the eye. "It hurts." she mumbles so quietly you can barely hear her.

"I'm sure it does." you quietly appraise all the bruises and old cuts. "I think you'd feel much better after a long bath, but if you don't want to, nobody is going to make you little one." the words flow so freely off your tongue and you can't help but clench your eyes and hope she doesn't pick up on the last part.

"She g-grabbed my s-shirt." she limply hangs her head and tries to explain. "I want to take a bath but I don't like b-being grabbed or touched." she wraps her arms around herself and hides from your acute gaze.

"Would you like me to leave and give you some privacy—"

Her eyes suddenly come up to meet you, desperate and needing, "Please d-don't leave me alone." she whispers.

"Then I won't."

She thanks you softly and you sit yourself down on the ledge of the shower. Unsure on what your purpose is here, you quickly decide it's to act as her faithful sentinel and keep her safe, blabbering about the wayward thoughts that cross your mind to distract her like you've done all day. You start with the editorial covers, the magazines you like, the ones you don't. She settles into your words, standing there and working up the courage to allow you a view of her skin.

"I think my favourite colour might be gold," you eventually muse out loud after you run out of other things to say, "sometimes I think it's silver and other days I like blue but today I think it might be gold, what's your favourite?"

You watch her think carefully as she tries to inch the shirt off of her back, her shoulders are tender and swollen, you can see that through the large arms of her t-shirt that dangle down and offer you a view of the side of her chest.

"Whatever you want my favourite colour to be Miss Lexa." she reels off.

"That isn't what I asked," you remind her gently, "what is your favourite colour?"

"Whatever pleases you Miss Lexa."

It dawns on you this must have been a rule of her previous life, don't disagree, don't think for yourself, do as you're told and say what you're told to say. It's a battle for another day you decide, talking alone is enough of a victory today though you're not thrilled about the pet name she has decided for you but it could be worse, you resign yourself.

"Would you like some help with your top?" you offer, she's been trapped with the back of her shirt inching up her spine for half a minute and you feel uncomfortable not offering. "I can be very, very gentle?" you add.

"P-please, thank you." she stutters.

You place the material between your fingers and with an absolute precision you avoid the skin on her back all together, she flinches away from you, but her trembling stills as you pull the t-shirt over her head and free her all together. "See," you softly smile, "Not that bad right?"

She nods in agreement and climbs in the bath, the sight of her back sickens you to the core of yourself, scars lay criss-crossed over the skin, piled up over one another with fresh open wounds still on her back — they're dirty and red around the edges of the wound and the minute she's awake tomorrow Anya is going to hear an earful about this.

"You poor baby," you can't help but mutter quietly to yourself at the sight of her. Her eyes clench and her face winds up into a scrunched up mess as she lowers herself beneath the water that laps against the open wounds on her back.

"Can I get you anything?" you offer.

You catch a glimmer of confusion from her, hands dug into the sides of the bath, finally sitting down beneath the bubbles.

"You must think I'm crazy—"

"No!" she nearly yelps with a desperate skittish expression, "I— you're not crazy, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have been rude, you're being very kind to me…" her voice is so broken and tiny.

"Relax," you hush, "it's okay, I should have been more careful with my words. I just want to know if I can do anything for you." you emphasize and she visibly deflates with relief.

"I can't—" she pauses and minds her words, "I, would you please, can you," she stumbles. "Can you help me with my hair?"

You spare verbosity and simple move to the side of the bathtub, it's a bad idea and you know it, but the girl has taken a shine to you and unless someone tackles those dreadlocks they'll be knotted all the way to her scalp, so you concede and pull out shampoo and conditioner from the little soapbox at the foot of the bath. "Is it okay if I, you know, touch you?" you ask awkwardly and wet your hands with bath water.

"Please don't hurt me," she reminds you very quietly.

"I'll be very, very careful." you promise and guide her backwards to wet her hair, it splays out in the water paler than wheat and whilst you keep her there she rubs the dirt from her face with soapy hands to keep herself occupied and distracted.

Her shoulders are trembling and her neck keeps pulsing and you know she's fighting every urge to fly out of your grasp but somehow she keeps herself there and allows you, a dominant, to gently wash away the tangles in her hair; you make sure to lather her scalp very gently because you can feel tender swollen bruises beneath your fingertips and it weighs you down like lead.

You wash it for all of ten minutes, conditioning her hair and combing it with your fingers and it dawns on you once she climbs out of the bath and towels herself off that you haven't drank yourself into a stupor tonight. Instead you tended to this little creature and washed her hair, maybe Anya wasn't too far off of the mark, maybe having someone around for company wasn't a terrible idea.

"Miss Lexa," she calls your name and you have to temper a small smile at the way it sounds in her mouth, you'll start correcting her in the morning, you decide. "Can I," she stops herself and grinds her jaw and you know from everything you've heard tonight this little beastling has probably never asked for a single thing in her past service. "Can I please read with you in your library?" she stares at the floor.

"That would make me so happy." you nearly burst.


	3. Chapter 3

You're seventeen and too full of yourself; the car pulls up in the driveway and lurking beneath the bravado and hubris of your youth is the terrifying feeling of permanency. Your father reads it expertly and squeezes your shoulder with a knowing little glimmer in his eye, it lasts for less than a moment and then he's off shaking hands and slapping shoulders with Costia's father Alexander. Your mother is dutifully by father's side exchanging pleasantries with Costia's mother and your years of theory are now to be put into practice.

Costia steps out of the back of the car and suddenly everything becomes a manual affair. Inhaling and exhaling, blinking, counting the rapid drum beats of your heart thrumming against your ribcage. The bravado has ebbed away and all you're left with is a childish adoration.

You've fallen in love with her thin pale wrists and her long eyelashes already.

"I'll help you with both of your cases," you say softly and toe closer towards her.

She looks you up and down, dissatisfied and uninterested in appearing otherwise, "I do have a pair of hands so thank you but that won't be necessary." she brushes you off and side steps you completely.

"Costia," Alexander says in that flustered tone, "I distinctly remember telling you to treat your young mistress with the greatest of respect, I did tell you that, did I not?" he inflicts the question with a furrowed brow.

"You were quite clear on it, Father." she says with a disinterested monotonous drawl. " Mistress, if you'll excuse me I'm going to my room." she tells you with a scowl in no uncertain terms and you're taken aback by her brashness, before you can stutter some semblance of a reply she walks right around you and makes her way inside.

Alexander turns a beetroot shade of purple and you swear you can see the sweat on his brow evaporate into steam, "You had one job, all you had to do was prepare her for service." he leans into her ear and though he's angrier than you can recall ever seeing him before, it quickly dissipates the longer he looks at Costia's mother.

"Perhaps I'm being to rash," he mutters and softens, "they are still very young, are they not?" he forces a little chuckle and looks to father for confirmation.

"They are." father nods politely, "Lexa, come here and tell your godparents what we discussed earlier."

You resentfully drag your feet, full of embarrassment and disconsolation that the sweet girl you spent so many family vacations with has turned into such an unruly wildling that has brushed you off already. You don't want her anymore, you decide firmly, you won't disgrace your father but the minute her parents drive home you will talk to him at once about calling off the engagement.

Father taps his foot and you realise they're waiting for you to speak, "Now please Lexa." he encourages you.

"I will be good to your daughter," you blurt and reel off what your father has spent years carefully instilling into your very nature, "I will treat her with respect and spend my life making hers as happy as possible and she will never fear the hand that guides her because I will never strike her or act in anger." you promise him with a deep sincerity. "I won't ever hurt her."

Costia's mother visibly deflates with relief and in turn Alexander's shoulders rise with pride, "Thank you very much." he pats your shoulder, "I think Costia is nervous to be away from her mother." he lowers his voice and explains away her behaviour, you get the distinct impression her mother isn't thrilled about the prospect either given her bloodshot eyes and snivelling nose.

You make assurances with her parents that she will visit often and call every day. There's a few minutes of pleasantries and though your mother offers them lunch they bid their farewells and it's for the best — it would be cruel for them to linger round whilst she settles, Alexander decides. On that note, after another round of handshakes, they leave.

"Can you send her back and make some excuse?" you whisper to your father with pleading eyes as soon as their car departs the driveway gates.

"Why would I do that?" he furrows his brow, "She's been saved for you since you were knee-high and a very pretty girl she's grown into may I add." he reminds you.

"Didn't you see the way she spoke to me?"

"I did," he confirms and wraps one of his big arms around you, "she's very spirited, isn't she?" he grins and pinches your cheek.

"I should punish her." you muse and nod your head thoughtfully, but the entire time you look to him for a reaction or thought on the matter.

"Those are decisions you'll have to make Lexa, she's yours to guide and protect now." he reminds you firmly but you hold your tongue and wait for what you know will be a nugget of advice.

"You know," he softens, "someone much smarter than me once wrote that there's a little bit of dominance in submission and a little bit of submission in dominance, do you know what that means?"

"That sounds stupid."

"It means," he rolls his eyes, "that maybe you'll have to let her have control in the first place so she can decide to give it to you when she's ready." he explains softly and walks you back towards the house. "Submission is a gift, Lexa. It's not a thing to be stolen."

…

You wake up gasping and heaving for air, your chest shudders for it, the cover is a crumpled pile on the floor and you're aware of the wetness that clings to your body with clothes you've sweated through and turned into wet rags.

You desperately want to fall back asleep and exist in a state of dreamy posterity with the fond memories of your younger years but that will have to wait. Monday has come around quicker than what you would like and Anya will no doubt turn up for breakfast earlier than what's socially acceptable.

Deep purple and melting orange is the the morning sky, angry and disconsolate to have to bid farewell to the moon. The sun will be up soon and though you wouldn't normally wake anyone this early, the last two mornings you've heard Clarke quietly shuffling around her room during these earliest of hours and so you assume with good authority that she is most likely awake too.

You slip your sweatshirt over your head and pull on some sweatpants and it's way more casual than any outfit she's seen you in before. You like the idea of her seeing you in something other than grey or navy trousers matched with some kind of dress shirt. It became your uniform for the day after you stopped really caring about how you looked but still recognised you should get dressed in the morning to avoid the sympathy filled prying of those around you.

You pad across the corridor towards her room and knock softly on the door.

A moment passes and she opens, dressed for the day already in some pants and one of your borrowed sweaters that sits oversized on her frame, sleeves rolled up and collar hanging loose to showcase her thin pale collarbones.

It astounds you how well she looks compared to how she arrived a few days ago, gone is the dirt and knots in her hair, there's pink in her cheeks and the smell of fresh soap follows her; you see to that personally in the evenings and help her wash her hair. Sometimes she doesn't let you touch her and instead you perch yourself on the shower ledge and let your mind exist in blankness for half an hour.

Though last night she was particularly brave and allowed you a better view of her back, the wounds are still giving her trouble, you've already took the liberty of putting antiseptic ointment and bandages down on Lincoln's shopping list for when he goes into town later today — with any luck she might let you see to them with a tender hand if you bribe her well.

"Miss Lexa?" she says and you pull yourself out of your day dreams.

"Sorry," you shake your head and smile.

"Did I wake you? I'm sorry, I, I should have been more careful—"

"You didn't wake me." you raise your hand in pause. You peek around the door frame to catch a little look of the room, the bed is immaculately made and you can see a cloth on the bathroom floor next to a bucket and it dawns on you the soft shuffling you hear in the morning must be her cleaning.

You make a point of praising her for nearly everything she does. It starts in the morning when you get her for breakfast and she's made her bed, by lunch time you've told her what a good girl she is for choosing what she wants to eat, by mid afternoon you've lost count of how many little praises she's earned. Today will be no different.

"May I come inside?" you clear your throat.

She steps out of the way and bows her head, she still won't look you in the eye and in spite of being a very naturally obedient girl she still won't call you anything other than Miss Lexa when she does muster up the courage to say more than one word to you. You don't mind that part. It actually makes you quite happy to hear those two words in her mouth.

"You're very thoughtful," you grin and make a big show of tenderly praising her, "Joan's getting a little older now and it must be such a big help to her when she sees you've already made your bed and cleaned everything." you hum and Clarke looks off to the window.

"Thank you Miss Lexa," she responds.

"Clarke…"

"Yes Miss Lexa?"

You bite your lip at the sound of the way she says your name but you make sure to keep your expression and infliction gentle, I don't want you to clean anymore. It's not good for your back and you're a guest in my home." you gently encourage her with a warm smile.

Clarke is crestfallen. Uncertain are the curves of her mouth, her eyes flitting between you and the bathroom, her fingers antsy at her sides. She doesn't speak but it's apparent she takes issue with your request.

"Speak, Clarke." you softly encourage her and sit down on the edge of the bed, "You can always say what you think. It's never wrong to have an opinion."

"When I'm cleaning I feel—" she bites her tongue and you watch as she tenses up, "I'm, I'm very sorry. I will do what I'm told when I'm told without question." she forces the words out.

You see the vacancy in her eyes, she's disappeared to a safe place within herself and you internally groan. "Did your old master have you clean for him?"

You earn a little nod.

"I understand," you reassure her with a little sigh, "I can't imagine how frightening it must be finding yourself in a home with strangers you don't know… if half my guests were as polite as you, I think I'd have many more friends indeed." you chuckle and hunch over with your elbows on your knees. "I want you to know that I know what it feels like to have everything change Clarke, how scary and... impossible it feels. If cleaning in the morning makes you feel helpful—"

"It makes me feel safe."

"Will you tell me why?"

"If I was cleaning I didn't have to be at his side. Sometimes when I have nightmares it makes me feel better if I'm doing something familiar."

Her voice is a beautiful sound, it elicits a small smile that blooms in the corners of your mouth and you have to stifle and hide it away.

"That makes sense." you feel guilty for smiling.

"Plus I like helping." she shrugs.

You hate the juxtapose between what you grew up with and her reality. The thought of a submissive cleaning on her hands and knees for her master makes you bristle at such a demeaning and lowly position. No submissive of yours would ever be degraded to cleaning the bathroom floor or polishing the silverware.

As painful as it is, you remind yourself she isn't your submissive, she is your guest. If father were here, he'd tell you to stop being so arrogant.

"I'm sorry I made you feel that I was taking away something that gives you comfort," you humbly apologise and she looks as if she might fall over with shock that the word sorry is part of your vocabulary. "How about we compromise—"

"Miss Lexa, I, no, you gave me an instruction and I will do as I'm told, I'm sorry. I'm very sorry."

You bristle with a soft kind of annoyance, it's the second time she's interrupted you and though she isn't your submissive she is still a submissive in your home and you can't stop yourself from correcting her behaviour.

"Clarke," you eye her sternly, "When I'm talking please don't interrupt me and when it's your turn to speak, I won't interrupt you."

She's immediately felled by your correction with shame that burns her cheeks pink and you watch on as a bystander as she clasps her hands behind her back and bites her wobbling lip. It's a dirty disgusting feeling that swells like a burst pipe within you. It's been so long since you've attempted this intricate art and the sight of her bending to your guidance is exhilarating and repulsing.

"I'm sorry Miss Lexa."

"No need," you warmly smile, "Shall we go for a walk before breakfast? There used to be a family of little bitterns that would come and nest in the garden around this time of year, I'd love it if you would accompany me to see if they've returned with their chicks."

"Aren't you going to p-punish me?" her voice cracks nervously.

Her hands are trembling.

She's frightened and you feel ashamed of yourself.

You stand from your hunched position on the edge of the bed and toe a little closer towards her. In four years, taking this little wildling into your home is by far your most elaborate form of self harm. The feelings that fill your chest are violent and unwelcome yet you tolerate them anyway and keep pushing on.

"Clarke," you say her name so softly it might be woven from silk, "You are not mine to punish, and even if you were? Well, I don't punish good girls."

"Thank you." she cracks in relief.

"Would you like to come see the birds with me before sunrise?"

"I'd like that very much Mistress."

The words are innocent enough but you feel the breath catch in your throat and your knuckles clench. There's a cyclone in your stomach and it's whipping your insides into a storm and you stand there for seconds that roll forth trying to batten yourself down.

You are not her mistress. You are not her mistress. She is broken and fragile in ways that sicken you; because how could someone ever handle someone as precious as Clarke so thoughtlessly. But you are not her mistress. That word burrows under your skin and itches its way through your muscles and you have to stop yourself running away and hiding like a scraggly weakened wolf.

You will never be someone's mistress again.

Never.

"What's wrong, did I, did I do something?"

"Don't call me that again please." you say stiffly and this time when hurt fills her eyes there's a repulsed iota of you that is glad. "I, I need you to understand something about me, Clarke." you breathe tepidly through the words, "I am a dominant and you are a submissive and sometimes, it might feel like you are, but you are not here to be in my service. You're not and you can't be because we are both healing."

She looks at you with those big blue eyes, pure and innocent, wheatish hair wisping around the frame of her face. This reckoning is for her own good, you decide, better to get it out the way now than allow her to grow any semblance of attachment to you.

"I didn't—" she stumbles on her words, "I know that." she admits quietly, "I just— I'm not used to calling dominants by their first name." she tells you with shame and embarrassment that pulses from her. "I can call you Lexa if you prefer.".

"Miss Lexa is fine." you concede and force the dissipating cyclone away. "Shall we?" you nod your head towards the garden.

She smiles and opens the door for you. Miss Lexa is manageable, you reconfirm in your head.

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

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Though you were most certain that Anya and Octavia would arrive at some ungodly bleary-eyed hour of the morning, it's nearly lunch by the time her silver mustang snaked up the drive. It's bad form, you think. It absolutely throws you off your game. Anya always used to be so regimented and precise in her ways before she took Octavia as her own last year.

You nearly called to check there wasn't a pile-up on the highway, but then sure enough she appeared, apologising. Languid eyed and glowing submissive in tow.

"Lexa, I would have gotten here sooner but we were," she hesitated and looked to Octavia at her side. "Tied up. Unfortunately."

Between the words of her rushed apology for running late, explaining some contrived white lie to cover her true reasons, you expertly read the pinkness of Octavia's cheeks and the way her chest tumultuously puffs for breath under the ardour of post-climax and smirk at the knowledge of what they were most certainly doing.

Octavia catches you peering inquisitively at her and you avert your stare.

She's a beautiful girl, a trophy someone without good breeding might say, she lives and breathes to please Anya and for that you love her like a friend you've known all your life. Anya is a gentle mistress, tender handed and softly spoken for the most part; there were many lonely years before Octavia fell into her lap, quite literally. 

Anya always bores you with the story of how she was three thousand words into a case report in a coffee shop in town when the most beautiful girl she'd ever seen tripped over a table and landed on her knees right in front of her.

"Lexa?" Anya repeats, shaking you from your thoughts. "Did you hear anything I just said?"

You open your mouth and close it again, "It's fine… really. No problem." you blush and shake your head.

"She definitely wasn't listening." Octavia whispers to her mistress, glancing at you out the corner of her eyes with a wry little smile.

Anya grins and pulls the girl into her body with an arm wrapped around her waist, kissing the crown of her hair, "You're very observant but don't forget your manners." she hums in her ear and you roll your eyes at them both.

"If you're both finished I'm starving. It'll be sunset before I get a meal at this rate." you bristle and set the pace towards the house. "Octavia," you call over your shoulder at the raven haired laithe of a girl.

"Yeah?" she calls back. 

Even with your back turned you know Anya's probably nudged her with an expectant little look.

"Yes Miss Lexa?" she corrects herself.

"I think Clarke is in the library reading Jane Austen… go and keep her company before she turns into Elizabeth Bennet. I'd very much like to talk with Anya before we sit down for lunch."

You open the french doors for them and Octavia looks to her mistress for permission before leaving for the library. It leaves a thick feeling of envy in your stomach, having a heavenly creature who looks to you with wanting eyes that need your approval. You shake the feeling off, reminding yourself of the burdens that come with such responsibility.

"Go," Anya leans down and presses a chaste kiss to her cheek, "Have fun, be nice. I'll come and collect you both in an hour." Octavia earned another little kiss just for existing, "Be nice, Octavia." she tells her in no uncertain terms with stern eyes that bloom into existence from past recollections of Octavia's spirited ways.

"She's a beautiful girl, very spirited."

"I know," she sighs and Anya stares at her with a particular intensity that makes you feel voyeuristic for watching. "I'm a lucky woman." she finally breathes.

"She's lucky too." you remind her and set off towards the parlour. "She certainly needed a dominant as masterful in patience as you are." you shrug your shoulders into hunches.

"I'm only masterful because she taught me to be."

"Is that the polite way of saying she's a little shit?"

"Careful, Aleksa." she warns you.

"I'm kidding!" you open the door, "Mostly."

It's been awhile since you've even bothered to pay a visit to the parlour. It was your father's favourite room, always smelled of his musky oak cologne and the bar was always stocked with the good whiskey that Indra hid from the kitchen for special occasions. Father prefered the curtains closed and the room cast in a gloomy darkness, it was here he gathered his thoughts, but one of the maids must have disturbed this sanctuary during a deep clean of the house.

The curtains are wide open, looking out over the circular fountain that sat in front of the property. The sun's beaming through and for a moment, fleeting and unwanted, you feel like you can't breathe. Someone has crept into this room and washed away the smell of your father's cologne and cleaned away the dust he spent a lifetime accumulating and you can't breathe.

Instead you blink and stare into nothingness.

"Lexa?" Anya says softly and wraps a hand over your shoulder. "It's okay, talk to me?"

You are not a submissive, you are not her submissive, you are a dominant and your inability to posture and hide your indifference sits with you as a yet another failure. Entirely too late, you swallow back whatever it is that's turning your insides to gasoline and press forward.

"Nothing. I thought I might have accidentally thrown my reading glasses out but I'm sure I'm just overthinking. Please," you pull out a chair, "come sit down with me. I've had a very interesting weekend…"

"I had my suspicions."

"She's a very wonderful girl."

Anya can't even begin to temper the curling grin that becomes her entire face. It makes you regret opening your mouth in the first place. Her smile is too presumptive and implies things that have no basis and she has yet to even open her mouth yet.

You lean over the table, peering at her with the full brunt of your foreboding, "Anya, don't go there." you warn her sternly.

"Fine." she shrugs and backs off. "Thank you again though, I did make a couple of phone calls over the weekend and there's a facility in Des Moines that might have a room become available soon. It's a great place so fingers crossed." she illustrates with both her hands.

"Fingers crossed." you reply tepidly.

"How has she been doing?"

"Probably a lot better if you'd of told me just how troubled she was. Do you know how many times I've put my foot in it this weekend?" you cringe. 

"If I'd have told you, would you have agreed?"

"No."

"Exactly."

"That doesn't make it right."

"No, but you don't seem to mind too much." Anya took a sip of her drink and stared intently.

"She's gotten much better at talking though. This morning we discussed the different birds that migrate through winter — riveting conversation as always."

Anya blinks and stares at you.

"I know, I know, you didn't bring her here so I can bore her to death with ornithology—"

Anya rolls her eyes with a huff. "Six weeks."  she grouches.

"What?"

"Clarke has been at Arkadia House for six weeks since we found her and she hasn't spoken once, not to me, not to anyone." Anya inhales a little breath and rolls her eyes, as if to say, of course it would be you who would magically get the girl to talk. "Ornithology?" she stares at you.

"I guess she likes birds." you blink and shrug. "She said swans were her favourite."

"She's definitely been talking to you?"

"Yes, Anya. Unless I've suddenly developed neurosis it would seem that's the most logical explanation."

"You haven't read her file, have you?" she glares at you knowingly.

Of course you haven't. You told yourself you'd get round to it. You kept it on your desk. In the early hours of the morning when you woke you tempted sneaking to your study and reading it, but no matter how much you told yourself over the last few days you'd get round to it — you still haven't.

You're not sure why. Maybe on some level it feels invasive, on some level you feel like Clarke should get to talk to you about those things when she's good and ready for you to know where she came from. You know you should read it though.

"Why are you scared, Lexa?"

At that question bile rises into the praecipe of your throat. To be scared of something is half way towards admitting that you care a great deal, which you don't, or so you tell yourself. 

"I'm not!" you bite.

"I thought her being here might help you as much as it could help her, but if it's too much… if you feel like you're getting in too deep…"

"I'm not." you cut her off abruptly. "And thank you for your concern but I don't need help. I'm fine just as I am. Clarke is wonderful but I am not in the market for another submissive and I have made that just as clear to her as I have made it to you."

Her hands turn into antsy things that dance along the ridge of her knees, full of a quiet kind of reckoning that you know she won't hold back because she never does. You wish just this once she'd find the strength. She almost shudders trying not to say anything but, you suppose, that's entirely the innate fault within being a dominant: the feeling that lives deep within you that you are right and the world must submit to your will.

"Costia is dead." she says slowly, as if you could ever have forgotten. "I know it hurts—"

"You know nothing, girl." you inflict the words with a snarl and watch Anya flinch with shame at the name.

There was a time when you were young teenagers, foolish and full of a willful kind ignorance when you both thought your relationship could be more than a platonic friendship of equals. It never could have worked, though she is softer and less forthright in her tendencies, Anya is dominant to the core of herself as are you.

But when your father found Anya kneeling at the foot of your bed all that stopped him calling her parents and inevitably having her shipped off to a reconditioning programme was your assurances that it would end and that you were ready to take Costia as yours.

It was the last time Anya was allowed in the house before your father's death.

"I'm sorry," you say delicately and still the shuddering of your chest. "I shouldn't have said that."

"You shouldn't." Anya agreed, full of a quiet embarrassment.

"You know I would never say anything in front of—"

Anya flashed you a glare, "If you ever breathe a word of it to Octavia, rest assure I will make your death look like a tragic accident." she hisses.

"There's the Anya I know. How did we ever think it could have worked? I mean, look at us?"

"Teenage hormones. Self loathing on my part, arrogance on yours, take your pick." she reminds you and leans into her chair. "I'd rather not talk about it if you wouldn't mind."

"Of course."

There's something innately wrong about the thought of Anya having ever allowed you to best her. The memory of her with her hands behind her back, shuddering against her natural deposition whilst you poorly mastered her in ways reserved for mistress and submissive. It makes you cringe. You can't even imagine how Anya must feel about it.

But that doesn't mean you regret it because as there is submission in dominance there is dominance in submission, and for the three months your dalliance lasted, she tutored you expertly with little experiences that shaped you.

"Stop thinking about it." she reads you with a scowl.

You chuckle and shake your head, "Sorry." you sigh.

The conversation dribbles on, small talks about business and sports, you manage to find a bottle of your father's hidden whiskey behind a vent cover near the window and you both share a glass and indulge in memories of your shared youth.

Anya's father was the editor-in-chief of three magazines owned by Arcon publishing and once your parents saw the little α marks form on each of your wrists — it was decided you would be most suitable friends for one another. Though you have been known to despise each other on occasion, for the most part, you've been inseparable ever since.

"Mistress?" Octavia sticks her head around the door after half an hour of conversation with your friend. Her eyes are big apologetic things, she knows better than to interrupt, she was told she'd be collected in an hour but here she is peering at Anya as if she needs her in eyeline in order to breathe.

It's a strange affair to watch, but watch it you do.

"Come here." Anya beckons her girl sternly and sets down her glass. Octavia obliges and without the need to be told she sinks to her knees beside Anya's chair and rests her head in her lap. 

"Hi." she says softly and closes her eyes, happy and content to be in her service.

Anya, bird mouthed and stern, soon fell victim to Octavia's cheek rubbing along the length of her thigh. Her lips soften into a soft slope of a grin and her hand is busy stroking her hair.

"Did I not tell you to wait until I came to get you?" she recovers with ith a stern infliction once more.

"I'm sorry, Miss."

"I told you to wait." Anya reiterates.

"You did but I missed you so much." her lips quirk into a pout.

You notice Clarke lurking by the door and you pretend not to, enthralled and intrigued to see her response. She watches them with an envious look, fingers thrumming against her sides with an antsy rhythm. You want to beckon her over but that would be cruel. As it is in your nature to exert control, it is within hers to want to be controlled and you know with an absolute certainty you will not allow her to kneel for you, ever.

"Imagine what Lexa must think of me." Anya nods towards you and stirs your attention. "Behaving like this. I expect better from you." Anya sniffs dourly and it's all it takes to crucify Octavia.

"I can go back upstairs—"

"That doesn't excuse your behaviour."

Anya is far more malleable than any other dominant you know, much more willing to bend and fit around her submissive's needs and that impresses you above all else the way she doesn't need to exert more than a wisp of force.

In Anya's home spankings are reserved for the very worst offences and everything else can be cured with creativity; the line writing, time out in the corner, hands on mistress's knees in silence type of creativity and though Octavia is unruly and rarely does as she's told. You know from the glimmer of excitement in Anya's eyes that she wouldn't have it any other way — she was always one for a challenge.

"I'm sorry, I won't do it again." Octavia promises quietly, nuzzling her cheek deeper into Anya's knee. "I just missed you so, so, so much." she reiterates.

"Such a brat," Anya rolls her eyes and chuckles. "You are the biggest brat that has ever lived." she picks on her playfully and is well beyond keeping up her stern pretense anymore.

You watch Clarke flinch at the word out of the corner of your eyes. Her antsy fingers balled into fists, wrists flexing, her eyes clenched close and you realise something is terribly wrong. 

You turn back to Anya to voice your concern but they are still settling their little dispute.

"Are you going to punish me?"

"When we get home," Anya confirms tenderly, "I think I'll have to whip you into shape."

Clarke explodes out of the door so fast you don't catch it until she's already half way across the parlour, teeth gnashing and pupils fixed on her prey.

"Clarke!" you call her name but it's too late.

She launches herself at Anya like a fired bullet. Arms reached out, tackling her straight out of her chair with a force you had no idea she possessed. There's a loud thud as they fall to the floor. You get round the table and move past a terrified Octavia to find Clarke already scrambling on top of Anya.

"Please, please, please, please," she mumbles over and over again, her fists wound tight in the lapels of Anya's leather jacket. You can't make out what she's saying, she has Anya pinned beneath her like a ragdoll.

"Don't whip her, she's a good girl, she's a g-good girl, don't hurt her, please."

You wrap your arms underneath Clarke and haul her up. She thrashes in your arms and you hold on for dear life. Anya peers up at you in shock and the fact she's conscious means you have to worry about one less thing.

"Clarke it's okay." You whisper the words in her ear but she is having an episode and your words are no use. Instead, all you can do is hold her to your chest, you pull her to the floor with you and keep her there for what feels like minutes, long tears dripping down and scalding your arms.

You hear Anya reassure her submissive that she's not hurt and you breathe a sigh of relief. With any luck this won't count as strike number four, because whatever a secure home is, it is doesn't sound pleasant and now that you're confronted with the possibility of her being taken away from your ward, you're winded in the knowledge that you don't want her going anywhere out of your sight.

"Don't hurt her!" Clarke wails as Anya gets up off the ground with an arm slung over Octavia's shoulder.

You have to tighten your grip to stop her grit your teeth and huff with disappointment that you allowed this to transpire. The wounds on her back have opened up under the ardour of her working muscles and that is your fault. You should have saw this transpiring.

"Clarke," Anya says tenderly, "Clarke look at me."

She is a whimpering mess in your arms but she still has enough energy to give you a struggle. You should really do more cardio, you realise entirely too late. Anya inches closer and Clarke thrashes harder against you, attempting to lunge at the other dominant.

"Clarke!" you bark and she is suddenly still in your arms, chest shuddering, yelping as you pull her back against your chest. It makes you feel sick, but something has snapped within you and you're in mistress mode — your control masterfully exerted to bring her in line.

"Don't let her whip her." she begs you softly, "Please, please, I'll, I'll b-be good… don't let her hurt anyone. It was my fault?" she lies automatically to save Octavia.

Octavia wraps a hand around her mistress's shoulder and gives her a gentle look, she steps towards you both, she's slow and slight and Clarke doesn't perceive her as a threat and sags boneless in the relief of it.

"Anya is one of the good ones — she would never hurt me, you don't have to worry about that." Octavia promises matter of fact. "She works for the department because she wants to help submissives, not hurt them."

Clarke looks to you for reassurance, she cranes her neck, her eyes desperately searching to find yours. Loosening your grip ever so slightly, you allow her to shift and get a better look at you.

"She's telling you the truth."

"She said," Clarke licks her lips, "She s-said, she was going to, to, whip her and I—"

Anya covers her mouth, guilty as she's ever looked. It sickens her and you watch her fight down the bile in her throat at the thought of ever laying a finger on Octavia like that. "You thought I was going to beat her?"

Clarke nods timidly.

Anya opens and closes her mouth, she looks between you and Octavia, eyes lingering on her submissive with a tender kind of expression. "You know I would never—"

"Shut up!" Octavia softened and clutched at her hands, "I know you would never hurt me."

You've all but released your clasped hands at this point and Clarke sags against your chest, weeping, blushing and simmering with a quiet embarrassment. 

"I'm so sorry, so sorry, please," she bites the insides of her mouth and a long whimpering noise escapes her lungs and throttles you, "Please don't make me go back."

Her whimpering voice snips at the last of your self-imposed restraint, "Clarke, go upstairs and wait in your room." you say with the stern infliction of a mistress.

It's for her benefit and for that reason you'll do it. She needs the reassurance of someone telling her what to do, how to exist, how to survive, how to be. 

"Right now." you add softly.

She slips into the subservient space where her true nature existed and does as you order her to do, head hung low, chest vibrating, picking at the skin on her wrist. You know expertly what she needs and you will give it to her, temporarily, platonically, you'll help guide her if it's what she needs to get better. If it's what she needs to feel safe.

There's a silence that falls the room for a moment.

"Well, I guess you were right. She's definitely talking." Anya spoke first.

You flop backwards on the floor with a deep sigh, "What happens now?"

"Lexa…" Anya trailed off with eyes that warned you, "I have an obligation to report this."

"Only because she thought you were going to whip me." Octavia glared at her mistress with a raised brow and you want to warn her she's treading on thin ice but you're limit is protecting one testy submissive at a time.

"Anya don't report this, she won't survive back there, she's safe here."

"What if she attacks you?" Anya crosses her arms.

You shrug and look to your hands, "I've had worse." you whisper, and you can't believe you're doing this, you're about to somersault right over this sacred boundary you've upheld for years all for the sake of a scrawny girl with eyes as blue as cornflower. "I have a plan."

"Really? Because I would love to hear how—"

"One hour."

"What?"

You stand up, because sat on the floor is hardly the place you want to make this proposition. It's impossible to gain respect or be taken seriously when you're below somebody's eye-level, you're certain it's the reason why people treat the homeless and vagrant as if they're invisible.

You lick your lips and stand as tall as you can. "If she wants me to... I will be her mistress for one hour a day, platonically and temporarily, until you find somewhere permanent for her to go. I think she needs to feel secure and I… I think it'll help me to." you grit your teeth and nearly choke on the words.

 


	5. Chapter 5

There's an eery silence as you stand in the hallway, pacing backwards and forwards, thinking of what you will say and what you will do. It's all futile you think, because dominance is a practical affair and less of a philosophical game. Though if it were a game you've certainly been retired from the sport for a while.

You find Clarke pressed into the corner, silent, shuddering with these tiny shoulders that just crumple like aluminium under the weight of her conscience. It dawns on you that for all your brooding, for all your misplaced pessimism and self-doubt, this is the right decision. To leave her without someone to tell her how to exist, throwing her in the deep end to wrestle with the grand idea of being entirely alone, it's a cruel thing. Wicked and callow in the highest degree.

Costia always said the thing she loved about you the most was how much you knew and how much you didn't; the juxtaposition between the two was where the greatest adventures lived, or so she thought. You were her great pretender, the master of the world, the source of all things born of wit and curiosity. You were never too proud to let her teach you the small things that escaped you either, she was fond of that too.

It was at her hands you learned how to be gentle, how to listen, how to hold a fragile thing in your hands and let it tame you.

Now retrospectively, you resent the arts she tutored you in so masterfully. Staring at Clarke's shivering shoulders, the muscles quivering underneath her back like hummingbirds live beneath her skin, her ribs expanding and contracting with the low angry manacled sound that emanates from the back of her throat, you now know something of how a library must feel when it looks at a fireplace to see love poems being used for kindling.

"Clarke,"

She stills the quiet vibration in her shoulders and stands with a stiffness that locks her joints. You try desperately not to look, the sight makes you want to retch the blackness out of your heart, but between and over her shoulder blades are these thin red lines that criss-cross one another and you think it might be the most sorrowful thing you've ever seen.

"Miss Lexa," she whispers your name, "I'm, please, I'm so sorry—"

"It's okay." you breathe and you want to clutch your chest to stop the gnawing pain that's eating away at you, somehow though you fortify yourself and tilt your chin up with a natural dominance you rarely give in to. "I think, I think we're all to blame for this." you muster the words tenderly lest you be the cause of more turmoil for the hummingbird who has found herself in your ward.

"Can I turn around?"

"Please do," you answer tenderly and blink. "I want you to come and sit down. I'm going to talk, and all you have to do is just listen, okay?"

She nods and wipes her eyes, it's a defiant beautiful thing. She perches herself and though you know she is terrified, she trusts you and so she sits.

"I'm," you look to the ceiling as if the words in your throat have made their escape for the stars and got stuck in the rafters instead, "I'm not used to this." you almost scowl at the absurdity and shake your head, "I know it's hard, feeling like you suddenly have a million decisions to make and all you want is someone to take control so you can just… exist for five minutes."

She glances at you with cornflower blue eyes, as if to say, and what of it do you know?

"I just want to let you know that if it's what you want I would be happy to take control… just for an hour a day so that you don't feel entirely out of your comfort zone."

"You'll be my—"

"Please don't use that word." you cut her off quickly before she can say those two-syllables that fill you with a poisonous dread, "But yes… I suppose so." you concede and scratch your neck. "I thought perhaps you would find it helpful having time where you can take some comfort in not having to make all the decisions, platonically, temporarily, until you feel more comfortable. It's your decision entirely."

The pale wheat of her hair and the contours of her smile are highlighted by the leyline of light cut into you both from the sun settling over the gardens beyond the crystalline window. It relieves you. 

Breathe again, you will yourself, breathe again. She's smiling and the hard part is over.

"Do you want that?"

"So much," she says mildly, looking at you with innocent maiden-fair eyes that set you alight, the lip of her sweater shirked up to her teeth. "I'd like it very much, Miss Lexa." she reconfirms with an eager nod.

At that you find yourself nodding too, entirely uncomfortable, hands on your hips, suddenly without an inclination of what you should do next. 

"That's good." you agree and cringe at the vapidity of your words.

"Erm, would it be okay, if we, you know—" 

She stutters over herself and you take this opportunity to feel out the template of authority you've long since abandoned, "It's okay," you place your hand on the small of her back, and it isn't okay, because she flinches like you've just burned her with a cigarette and though you should take your hand away, you don't, you leave it there for her to settle into. 

"Tell me what you want and it's yours." you promise her.

"Boundaries." she forces out the word with her eyes clenched closed, "Please don't touch my back without asking me." she tells you quietly.

You rip your hand away so fast you now know something of how a hummingbird must feel. "Sorry," you force an apologetic smile and wipe your clammy hands against your trousers, you're grateful they're black today, you can feel the nervous perspiration from your hands dampening your legs.

"I'm sorry," she shakes her head, "I'm… I'm not a good girl." she tells you earnestly with a crack in her voice.

She says it so quietly your ears have to strain to confirm that she said it, you replay it in your head, it's the most sorrowful thing you think you've ever heard. It leaves a ropeable violent feeling in the pit of your stomach — you're going to make mountains out of the suffering dolled to the person responsible for her pain. Mountains and jagged cliffs of misery they never knew possible, because a jail cell is not big enough to contain the evil it takes to break someone the way Clarke has been broken.

No.

No you won't.

Clarke is not yours, she is entirely her own, and in these moments she will lend herself to you with the greatest trust that you will care for her like a precious thing to be reverently adored and that will be enough. It will be all.

"I thought it might be appropriate if you were in my service for one hour a day." you find yourself licking your lips, "Just enough to help you but too little to be self-indulgent on my part," you muse and rub your neck as if it'll help absolve you of the gnawing that's felled your windpipe, "but I think I would like for you to be in my service for the rest of today so we can talk through what boundaries exist. I can take care of you today. I would like that."

She doesn't speak, not a single noise falls from her lips, she slips into the space where her servility lives and with tender shaking hands, she toys with the rim of her sweater. Your lips purse, you go to ask what she's doing, but it becomes redundant. She tries to pull the sweater over her head and it hits you like a fist in your solar plexus.

"Clarke, don't do that, stop," you demand softly and wrap your hand around her shaking fist, "What are you doing?"

"You, you said," she looks to the floor, embarrassed, "you said you wanted me to be in your service." her voice trembled nervously.

"Dearest," you cover your mouth and blink away a stinging sensation that bites at your eyes, "No, not like that." you reassure her and rub your thumb over her hand. 

"There is one truth I am determined that you will understand before you leave my home, and it is this; you are a good girl, you are a good girl who is smart and daring, and you can be anything you want to be in this world, my love. I want most for you above all else to never feel like you ever have to be small and quiet."

The relief that overcomes her is palpable and though you want to take her in your arms, hold her and quell this storm, you don't, you sit there with hands between your legs holding on to your very bones whilst she figures out how to weave flowers over scars that exist in places no one can see.

"Can I," she bites her lip, "can I kneel for you?"

You stiffen for a moment and though you don't want her to, you find yourself saying yes, you find yourself agreeing mindlessly because this is about her needs. "Only during play and never outside of this room." you tell her firmly.

You're certain she's too drunk with relief to have heard any of what followed. On shaky-legs that move with a lingering uncertainty you find yourself moving to the armchair in the corner that faces the window. "Come here," you beckon her and breathe.

Chest heaving with cathartic sobs, she sinks to her knees beside you and buries her cheek against your thigh and the willingness, no, the need, is something you have no experience in. 

Hold her, you tell yourself. Make this better, you scream it at your heart.

"Good girl," you say with the infliction of a mistress. "My good girl."

She shudders with gratification and melts into your lap, tears dampening you leg, arching her neck so more skin is available for your fingers to graze against in a slow kind of rhythm.

Your stomach grumbles but you're hungry for something else and with a reluctant admittance, you know you have longed for this. You have died a thousand deaths every night hating yourself for your very nature but your dominance greets you, arms wrapped around you, red cheeked, shouldering you like an old friend.

"Put your hands on my knees."

She moves in front of you, kneeling, hands on your kneecaps, her face is softened with joy and she is lighter just for existing beneath your sitting figure. In true dominant fashion you leave her to exist there with her own thoughts in peace whilst you do the same.

It's a beautiful day, from this seat you can see the centre of town on the horizon and you watch cars that are nothing but little dots flit around and for the first time in longer than you can remember, you are not envious, you are sympathetic, because sitting here with this heavenly creature bowing for you is a paradise unto itself.

You spend what you know is at least an hour doing nothing more than sitting here in a peaceful silence taking great pleasure in the sensation of Clarke's nose grazing the side of your knee as she rests herself there.

"Little one," you clear your throat, "I want you to run a bath. I want you to let me clean the wounds on your back, will you let me do that?" you cup her cheek.

She's between your knees peering at you with tentative blue eyes, weighing you up, but to your impress, she never denies you.

Her mouth opens and closes again, "Yes Commander." she submits.

Commander.

She disappears and you want to burst out laughing at the title, you want to laugh until you cry, it's an insidious feeling. A symphony of pain and a lingering happiness that sits underneath your skin and you swear you can feel it moving through your veins.

You never talk about your military service, though they were undoubtedly the happiest years of your life. They were ironically the years before tragedy came, they were the years when your father wrapped his solid arms around your uniformed figure and toted you around the reception room at Christmas telling everyone who would listen that you were his brilliant daughter who proudly served as a Lieutenant aboard USS Avalon.

They were the years you came back from tour and Costia fell weak-kneed into your arms in sheer joy that you came home to her with your beautiful face still in one piece. You would stick your white and black cap over her head and carry her to the motorcade made up of well-wishing family, teasing her the entire way there because your tour was a peacekeeping mission in Senegal but as far as she was concerned you may as well have been bare-knuckle boxing ISIS militants in Raqqa.

You left after four years service, hardly a hero, still wet behind the ears.

You tilt your head over your shoulder and the sight pulls at your heartstrings, there is a picture of you in your black dress uniform on the side table, proud and bird mouthed with flags draped behind you, twenty-two and young enough to be conceptual at best.

You wonder how many times Clarke has looked at that picture in curiosity, how many times she's wondered who you are, how many times she's wanted to ask you questions. You're glad she never has.

"I'm ready, Miss Lexa."

Though Commander has a ring to it that fills you with a want for laughter — Miss Lexa will do just fine too.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> www.diaphanousoverture.tumblr.com

The night is slow and quiet, it yields an intrusive kind of thoughtfulness like spring rain. Clarke sticks in your thoughts like craft glitter because an hour a day is barely enough though you’re nowhere near prepared to delve further into why. On your best days you end the sessions early and on your worst you hang on for tender minutes past the stroke of the hour clinging to the sight of her doing happy mundane things.

She talks more during your sessions, small things at first, she told you about a doll she had when she was a kid with pink cheeks that remind her of yours. No less than a day later she told you about a creative writing class she once took, she said she liked renaissance the best because modern poetry felt vapid. She used that word, vapid. It sounded beautiful in her smiling mouth.

You still hadn’t read her case report but tonight was different, tonight you tossed and turned amongst crumpled damp sheets and against your utmost determination to remain blind to the truths bound within the coffee stained file stuffed in your desk draw — you relented, you crept downstairs and you read every word like a sibling reading a diary, disgusted and repulsed, unable to stop yourself.

The house sleeps and you sit awake, mortified as you are, gingerly thumbing the cover of the file on your desk. Throw it away, you tell yourself. Maybe then you can undo what you saw.

But you know what you know, you bit the apple and now the curse of knowledge is another boulder in the wagon you drag behind you.

Little more than a child of fifteen when she was taken out of the foster system and handed off to a family in presumably good standing with a son a little older than her age, they became fast friends and with time that turned into something else entirely, he moved her out to a cabin by the coal pits his parents owned.

There’s reports and scrap pieces of paper with telephone numbers and small details jotted down. You imagine concerned neighbours and good samaritans calling the department in hushed tones about a girl they saw in town with a blackened eye or loud pleas coming from the cabin in the wee hours of the morning.

It fits in Anya’s case report — people cared at first, they called, the police visited and he got off with slaps to the wrist and she was twice as black and half as blue the next morning because of it. The calls stopped, the abuse continued. It curdles your stomach.

Behind the paperwork there’s catalogued hospital records neatly bound together, colour coded at the top, dated and signed by physicians. You quickly realise that red is the worse, red is overnight stays and reset bones, you can’t stomach counting them all because there’s at least two red sticky notes for every orange and blue. It dawns on you that the same name is signed at the bottom of every hospital release form.

His name is Roan Winters.

In the official paperwork he’s the defendant, the dominant, the accused, the perpetrator — but right there along the dotted line is his name clear as day. Roan Winters. It stings the inside of your mouth, it’s pungent, it leaves you morose and clenched handed. You know with absolute certainty that you are never going to forget that name for as long as you live.

You imagine him in the evidence pictures of her purple ribs, you see his calloused knuckles laying into her. You see his snarled teeth in her busted lip. His cold eyes in the scrawny bones that jut out against her translucent skin. You retch into the waste basket at the side of your desk and though your chest shudders and your gut heaves, all you rid yourself of is long drips of spittle.

five years she endured at his hand.

There’s little by way of statement from Clarke, a single transcript of a conversation with Anya in fact. She didn’t say anything in it, but you read little details between asterisks, details like she nodded and shook her head at different points, that she cried when Anya asked if he ever did things to her that she didn’t want him to do.

It’s the latter that tips you over the edge and empties the small contents of your stomach into the wastebasket.

You tortured yourself for the best part of an hour before you couldn’t stomach anymore. You turn out the lights, closed the door, promising yourself you will find a way to wash the pictures out of your eyes. You climb the stairs to weather the rest of what you know to be a sleepless night.

“Light reading, Miss Lexa?”

You snap your eyes across the hallway to see her hunched figure sitting on the carpet outside her door. You open your mouth and close it again, though it’s late, you are not her dominant in this hour and so you have no business telling her what to do or how to cure her nightmares.

“I’m going to take a wild guess and assume you know what I was reading.”

“Mmm, the sound of you dry heaving gave that away.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Please don’t be… everyone’s always sorry, always apologising, it feels stupid to me.” she sighed and hung her head back, “Sorry is something you say after the fact, like, sorry I stepped on your toe or sorry I wasn’t listening. I’m still living through it. I’m still stuck here at night with my toe getting stood on.”

“Come on,” you arch your neck towards the staircase, “I need a drink.”

Your legs move with a natural muscle memory towards the parlour but you catch yourself and change course to the reception room in the south of the property. It’s a brisk walk, the parquet may as well be ice beneath your bare hopping feet. You dig your hands into the pockets of your sweatshirt and notice that Clarke is unfazed by the chill — you want to ask why but you know it won’t elicit any kind of good answer.

Carpet comes quickly, and then heat, the radiators always stay on in the vast reception room to stop damp consuming the wood. You’re sure the heating bills would earn furrows in your brow if you ever cared to look at them, but right now you couldn’t be more grateful for the impracticality of it.

“Drink?” you ask quietly though your voice still echoes around the empty room. You pull the glass decanter off of the side board with one hand and two crystal glasses with the other whilst she foots closer towards you.

“Scotch, right?” she asks softly whilst you pour a small pony in each glass.

“Loaded question, but your assumptions are absolutely correct.”

“I’ve never drank before…”

“Here,” you push the glass in her hand, “I think you earned one.”

She accepts it gladly and you move to the seat that bends around the bay window, she tucks one of the pillows in her lap and exhales a content little noise.

“What are you thinking about?” you push.

“Nothing.”

“You’re a terrible liar,” you roll your eyes and pull a deep glug of whiskey into the sides of your cheeks, “I keep thinking about what I read in that report—”

“Please,” she winces and bites her mouth, “Is it okay if we don’t? I know it’s an interesting story but I have better ones.”

She is beautiful like this. You know little about this strange companion of yours but everyday she shows you with wincing eyes and uncertain noises which tumble out of her mouth that she is tired of the shadows of pain that she was born to. She is rising, she is dragging, she is clawing, she is inching towards better days and maybe it’s your turn to stretch your aching legs in that direction too.

You purse your lips, “Better stories?”

“Tons of them.”

“Such as?”

"Things you would care little about."

"Try me?" you raise your brow and take a sip of your drink.

“Well…” she shrugs and looks to the stars, “I, was, well, I thought that—”

“You can ask me for anything.” you reassure her and hold back the words little one from tumbling out of your mouth.

“I know it’s just hard, Miss.”

“It doesn’t have to be. I wish you knew how much it pleased me when you ask me for small things. It makes me feel useful.”

“Will you tell me something about yourself? I feel like you know all these awful things about me and I don’t know anything about you.”

You gingerly flex your fingers and lean back into the chill of the window frame. The request is simple enough, but still you find yourself working for a response, what accomplishments can you lay claim to other than getting dressed in the mornings?

“I work in publishing,” you say confidently, “have you heard of Harper magazine?”

“You work for Harper magazine?” she blinks at you.

“I own it.”

“You own it?”

“The New York Review, Discovery, Economist’s Report and Collar Life, though if you have any taste I’m assuming you won’t be familiar with that one. Arcon Publishings owns all of them and more.”

“And you own Arcon Publishings?” she asks quietly.

“According to my email signature.”

“Impressive.” she grins and takes her first tentative sip of the liquor in her hand. You want to chuckle. Her face has twisted into a morose expression and her nose pinches with the aftertaste. She catches you smirking at her, “I don’t think scotch is my drink.” she admits softly.

You find yourself falling into a lush state of intrigue with your strange and beautiful companion, taking tiny sips to make your drink last long into the night so you can continue your little interactions about happy irrelevant things like the tortoise you had when you were six that ran away.

She laughed and you decided quite certainly that the giggle you earned was an achievement you could hold on to and remind yourself of when you slept tonight.

“Lexa?” she peers at you whilst you find your last sip.

It’s the first time she’s used your name. small and angular, slim and willowy, she leans into the sound of it and though you sorely miss the prefix attached to your name but you have no business correcting her.

“Mmm?”

“I was wondering, if, well-”

“God we have our work cut out with you, don’t we?” you grin.

She blushes and rolls her eyes, “I know that you said we’re only allowed an hour a day…”

“What?" you blink.

“It’s just, I was wondering, if just this once, you might let me have a little extra time. I had a night terror, he was right there, close enough for me to feel his breath and I." she stopped herself and dragged her teeth against inside of her mouth, "I just feel safe with you. Will you stay with me tonight?”

Say no, you will yourself, stifling smile and broad shoulders lean you into the conversation and the rational part of you howls on about boundaries and oversteps but you’re past caring.

“If that’s what you want.” you shrug rather haphazardly.

Her eyes light up in the most exquisite way, “You’ll stay with me?” she reiterates with a grin that pulls up and dimples her cheeks.

“Go and get in bed before I change my mind."

With a natural servility she bids you goodnight and scampers off to bed and you know, you know you will follow her upstairs. It takes two minutes of rough house wrestling between your head and your heart but it’s clear who won the fight when you find yourself toeing up the last few steps quietly and turning right towards her bedroom.

“Clarke?” you whisper into the dark open crack of the door, there’s no reply and you are both relieved and disappointed that she fell asleep without you.

You foot back to your bedroom and close the door behind you. It’s dark and save for a slither of light that illuminates a thin strip of the door, you can’t see anything.

The hairband clinging to your wrist is quickly put to other uses as you wrap your unruly brown locks into a bun, you pull your sweatpants off and roll into bed before goosebumps spread down the backs of your thighs, blindly you reach out and what greets you earns a nervous flinch of your muscles.

“Miss Lexa?” she tiredly mumbles.

“What are you doing in here?”

You freeze. There is no protocol for this. She is splayed out on the other side of your bed with wide eyes that somehow find yours in the opacity of night and you want to kick her out and send her to her own quarters. No one is allowed in this room. You don’t kick her out though, you swallow, flex your fingers, breathe sharp little breaths through your nose, you tolerate this invasion.

“Miss Lexa?” she blinks again nervously and reaches out for you.

“I’m here,” you assure her and gently squeeze her hand. “I’m right here, don’t worry.”

In this moment you are her mistress, you are the protector of dreams and the warden of nightmares and the only thing that separates her from the terrors of ghosts that haunt her endlessly is you, and so you swallow your nerves like a mouthful of medicine and master your resolve.

She moves closer towards you, it’s tentative at first, these little shuffles that barely mess the bed sheets. Eventually you can feel her on the cusp of your personal space with her warm breath tickling you. It kills you. It’s too much and too little all at the same time.

“Come here then,” you groan and relent, lifting the edge of the silk covers you tucked around your body.

You expect her to cling to your hand or maybe just lie parallel to your figure. Instead she tackles you onto your back and burrows into the deepest heat of your body, arm wedged uncomfortably between your spine and the mattress so she can wrap herself around you, hands ghosting up and down your taut ribs. Head tucked beneath your chin. Nose pressed into your throat. Leg hooked over your hip. You are her glorified comforter.

You open your mouth and close it again.

“Goodnight Miss Lexa,” she murmurs against your throat.

“Goodnight Brat.” you grouch and mean none of it.

She falls asleep quickly in your arms. Lips vibrating with little snores against your throat and heavy breath that heats your skin, you leave her there for a minute, once you’re certain she is completely out, you decide you’ll free yourself from her grasps and carry her back to her bedroom.

Until then you tenderly graze over her shoulder with your fingertips, even if she’s not awake to feel what you’re doing you know better than to touch her back. Her back is a place that’s off limits all together without her expressed permission. You can live with that, you decide, her shoulders are very beautiful and dainty.

Eventually, you try to prise open her latched body gently, fingers wrapped around her wrist, hips wiggling to shake off her leg, but she will not release you. She presses herself into you harder, her joints coil around like a cobra squeezing its prey and you resign yourself to being her comforter tonight.

“This is stupid.” you mutter to yourself grumpily and huff.

Her snoring stops for a moment, you fear you’ve awoken her, but her hand slips into yours with fingers wrapping around your thumb and the vibrations against your throat resume once more.

“This is just pure greed.”

This feels like the receiving end of a particularly intricate form of bondage, it whips the beast that lives in your gut into a frenzy. You are not made to be domesticated or tethered to the whim of a hundred pound girl with fragile sensibilities. It’s disarming because here you are, puffing and sour faced, chin resting against her head, holding her tenderly whilst she pets the skin along your ribs in her sleep.

“Enjoy it while it lasts because this is a one time deal, kiddo.” you murmur tiredly and blink off sleep.

Regardless of your efforts exhaustion comes for you and lays claim. You’ll just close your eyes for five minutes, you decide, she is very comfortable in her own angular way after all. You close your eyes.

Five minutes, you repeat in your head.


	7. Chapter 7

I dreamed of you last night.

We were happy, or at least I think we were. It was winter and snow that had started the day as a dusting starved off the darkness of night with a thick blanket of white that covered every inch of your garden from east to west and further into the horizon of the town below.

We watched it from the bay window in your office, the air was cool but I knelt beside your lap with my cheek against your thigh and you draped your jacket over my shoulders to keep me warm. It was the same one I see you wear in the early mornings when you walk the perimeter of your house to gather your thoughts.

In my dream I wasn't frightened. I wasn't quiet. I told you stories about growing up in the children's home; they were happy stories and you smiled when I told you that I bossed around the boys, especially Bellamy, he was too much show and it never once scared me.

You think that I'm scared and timid and weak. I can see it in your eyes and I so desperately want to put you in your place because I don't want to be the object of anyone's pity. I can feel my fingers flex and my heart punch my chest, but I do nothing, because you are so kind and gentle to me. I don't know what I did to deserve you, my beautiful stubborn problem, but if owning a small broken thing is what pleases you then I shall make myself tiny.

Though in my dream you treated me as if I was as huge and formidable as the tallest mountain. You took me to your bedroom and I knelt for you whilst you ran your fingers over the bare essential parts of me that you loved the most; you started with my knee, then my belly, then your fingers danced across the ridge of my collarbone.

It culminated with your hand taking a fist full of blonde hair and your teeth nipping at my neck with lingering hot wet kisses whilst you told me small things about how beautiful I am with a tone that bordered desperate violence in your mouth.

Like a hungry wolf and a wide-eyed rabbit in the clearing, true to our most guttural natures, I made you give chase.

You painted my rear red with the palms of your hand, always in control and purposeful, whilst I came undone over your lap and I hung off of every single whispered dirty word that I can barely imagine you allowing yourself to ever be unrestrained enough to say. In my dream you said all of them. Every dirty word and beautiful threat known to man as if it was poetry in your bow shaped mouth.

You settled back in the pillows and I gave you my submission, like an alpha that eats first before the rest of the pack, you pulled off your belt and I slipped your trousers off the rest of your legs and settled between your tanned thighs.

I buried myself against you and earned little manacled gasps, my nose grazing against a soft patch of curls, your wetness coating the inside of my mouth. You told me I was good girl, you said it over and over again as if it were the answer to an otherwise arbitrary universe.

I awoke to the feeling of a soft grasp around both of my arms shaking me in the darkness of early morning. For a gut-wrenching second that felt like an eternity, I thought I was with master, but the beautiful reassuring sound of your voice talked me down until I could blink into focus and reclaim my stiff joints, able to make out the unmistakable shape of your eyes.

"It's okay, you're okay baby, it's okay." you told me gently and pulled me against your chest. "You were sweating and groaning in your sleep." you explain against the cusp of my hair and tuck me under your chin for safekeeping. 

I can feel your heartbeat flutter against my skin, I can feel your breast against the convex of my chest and all I can do is draw blushing sighs.

"Just a nightmare Lex." I lie.

You let me sleep in your bed some nights. Four times last week and twice this week. You never offer me your bed or the warmth of your body. Instead on the nights when you want company, you bid me goodnight and I watch your eyes linger into soft wanting things and I save you the turmoil. I ask if you'll let me stay with you.

Occasionally you say no and mumble an excuse, but nearly always you give in and roll your eyes and I duck underneath your arm to a bed that smells like vanilla and coconuts.

"I think you were calling for me in your sleep." you muse and settle into the pillows.

"What?"

"You kept calling for Mistress."

"Oh god," I mumble and move to pull away from your chest, "I, I'm so sorry." the words tumble out of my mouth like lemmings off a cliff. I'd broken your one cardinal rule and the pit of my gut felt sore at the mere thought of invading your boundaries.

"Stop." you order and pull me back towards you chest, "We don't apologise in this house for nightmares."

Maybe I should tell you the truth, maybe I should admit that it was the furthest thing from a nightmare I've ever experienced. Maybe if you knew that I dream of settling between your thighs and pleasing you the way a lover pleases her mistress you would see me differently. But neither of us are ready, you in particular, there is something you hide that gnaws away at you.

"Just a nightmare." I shake my head and sigh, settling back onto your chest. Your hands move through my hair and you fingers trail down my spin. I flinch and hate myself for it.

"Sorry," I feel you wince beneath me and pull back your hand. "That was an accident little one."

"Can I ask you a question?"

"You just did."

"I mean, can I ask a different one?"

"You just did."

I groan and you dissolve into slow quiet chuckles that feel warm and thick. I love the way you laugh. I love it even more when my ear is pressed beneath your breasts and I can hear them rumble around inside your ribs... I don't even mind if I'm the butt of it.

"I'm kidding," you tuck a piece of hair behind my ear, "ask away."

"What's inside the room at the bottom of the hallway?" I ask quietly and bite my lip.

My heart beats violently against my chest as I wait for an answer. I feel you tense beneath me like a spring coiling back and I have to fortify my joints to stop myself curling up out of fear you'll hit me. You won't, I know you won't, but the fear remains.

"Ask me a different question."

"Have you ever been in love before?" I blurt and feel myself melt under your confused stare.

"Once." you admit sadly.

This feels different now, your body is loose and I feel as if my arms around your waist and my cheek against your shoulder are all that is keeping you together. You aren't Miss Lexa right now. In fact I doubt there's even a little Lexa left in the hollows of your haunted eyes.

"Her name was Costia." you clear the long gnaw in your throat, "Always difficult, always beautiful. I don't think anyone has ever loved anything as much as I loved her." I watch you stave off tears. "As much as I still love her."

"Of course not," I speak out of turn and forget my place, "things are to be used and people are to be loved. I think if people remembered that the world would be a kinder place."

I feel you shift uncomfortably as if the heat of my body is attacking you with proximity and all I can do is roll off of you and settle by your side.

"I, I'm sorry," I breathe and pinch the bridge of my nose, "I spoke out of turn and it was rude—"

"Stop." you tell me with a sigh of your own, "Perhaps if I was feeling myself it would be enough to earn a stern brow but you're not my submissive and you can speak freely. I think we'd both do well to remember that."

Your words split my skin like paper cuts. I now know something of how a flower must feel when the sun hides behind clouds in the middle of spring because the reminder that I'm no one's submissive leaves a hollow echo in my heart.

"But," I say tentatively and think on my words, "I mean, I am something to you, right?" I force a small awkward laugh, "I, I live with you and you take care of me and I kneel at your lap whilst you read your editorial copies—"

"Clarke."

You cut me off with a low grumble and I clench my eyes close because I know this is about to hurt. I can hear it in the thunder of your voice. I can feel it in the electricity of your presence. I pushed you too far and now you're going to knock me down.

"You are not my submissive." you growl introspectively, "You are not and you never will be. I was promised to another and as long as I'm alive, she's alive too in some small way."

"Lexa—"

"No!" you hiss, "I have shown you kindness and dignity and, and friendship! I have clothed you and fed you and yes, okay, yes! Perhaps I take more pleasure in taking you to my bed than I should, but there is a line and you will not continue to push it!"

"Lexa—"

"You are not my submissive, Clarke, you are not my submissive because most of all? He hurt you and I can't promise that in some small way I won't either. You deserve more than that."

I dive at you.

My weight knocks you off balance and sends your sitting figure back into the mattress, you resist at first, I feel the sinewed muscle in your legs grow taut as you ready yourself to flip me off of you. I cling to your body and seek out your mouth.

You grow still.

I kiss you and for a moment reality is a gaseous vapour that fades around us and the only solid crystalline thing within my grasps is you. My tongue begs for entry and reluctantly you open your mouth; I hold your cheeks tightly and your weeping eyes obscure my view. I stare back entranced, hopeful, pleading that you'll want me back.

You shift your weight and throw me on my back. It's forceful and angry but you maintain enough restraint to hold my wrists gently as you clamber in position over me. I watch you heave above me like a shuddering felled beast and this is the most alive I have felt in what feels like a lifetime.

A single lone tear dribbles all the ways from your eye to my cheek, suddenly, reality is a heavy burden once more and my mouth opens and closes again under your watchful appraisal. I try to apologise, the first vowel gets ready to leave my lips but then you lunge forward.

You kiss me back and I am in awe of you.

"Get out." you growl against my mouth and pull back, wiping your tears with the backs of your hands. "Get the hell out of my room and wait until you're sent for." you shudder above me and release your grip.

"Miss—"

"Get out!" you yelp and bend over yourself, winded and despondent.

I can hear the sound of breaking glass and snapping wood from my neighboring room. I flinch, breathe and still myself with guilty hands that pick at my skin. You seethe in this way that feels as adverse as a hurricane or maybe a tsunami, the walls shake against the show of your anger and violence as if you're a natural disaster. You slow into a stillness, the sound of furniture hitting the walls and your hollow voice screaming against shattered glass quiets into the aftermath of the storm.

"Miss Lexa," I mumble and sigh to myself, "I think I'm falling for you."


	8. Chapter 8

The town was sodden wet. The buildings dripped and the water ran in the same direction and converged on the roads until the gutters and drains couldn't cope anymore and gave up under the rain's effort. Though it didn't stop you, if anything it pushed you further, the tires of your car took to corners with precision and the water from the deepest puddles splashed up onto the windows with a noise that sounded almost like applause at the symphony of your breakdown.

You took long pulls from the whiskey bottle in your right hand and wiped angry needle-like tears away as the speed limit became a light suggestion in your mind rather than a law.

The sight of greenery and shops and raincoats and people doing early morning mundane things and submissives tailing their masters and masters holding doors open offers you a brief glimpse into the normalcy you've locked yourself away from. It sickens you, it makes you wish you could claw your skin off, because Costia lives in every happy mundane moment and if you could burn away the α mark that taints your wrist and send her away to a far place where those green eyes could haunt you no longer, you would.

Instead you just pull another gulp of bitter amber liquid into the hollows of your cheek with an ever-tightening expression and hit the gas. Less than a dozen times you've ventured out into this world since the night your life was torched to ash and bone, but Clarke's plump lips are enough to send you scuttling into this unknown like a cockroach escaping light.

Part of you hopes you crash the car before you get to where you're going. It was Anya’s idea in the months after the tragedy. She slipped you a black business card with a name and number in gold stenciling on the back and told you there was no shame in alternate therapy.

You had heard of Raven Reyes before from a number of dominants around town. It was always a quiet dirty kind of talk, the same hushed tone people use when they speak of red light districts, cheating husbands, bad mothers and in this case… petite spunky submissives who specialise in power exchange therapy reserved for the most stubborn of troubled dominants.

You made a big show of crushing the business card in your hand and tossing it in the trash can. You never told her that after she left that day you pulled it back out, flattened it in the palm of your hands and slipped it into your wallet.

You drive for what feels like an hour but is most probably fifteen minutes. The car pulls around side streets and doubles back around dead ends as the warmth of the amber liquid knocking around in the bottle beside you starts to haze your cognition.

You haven’t been back to this place since your last session a year ago. The therapist, or rather the mechanic as the private circle of clients who knew her penchant for fixing things called her, became something of a friend and that was unacceptable. 

Her therapy relied on an exchange of power that embarrassed you, you would come to this practice out of hours and kneel for your therapist whilst she digged around in the afflicted parts of your subconscious and tried to get to the roots of your post traumatic stress as a platonic mistress of sorts.

You thought it impossible; the act of slipping into some mild form of submission, kneeling and casting your eyes to floor, allowing another person to bare witness to the metastasizing darkness that poisoned your heart and head like cancer. It was actually easier than you like to admit to submit yourself to that suffering.

The thing that terrified you in the end was the dry little jokes shared in the elevator back to the ground floor at the end of your sessions, the homemade leftovers she brought over with merlot to wash it down because god knows you weren’t eating, the secondhand comic books that you ended up taking home with you because the legendary mechanic discovered your joint love for Batgirl.

Friendship was off the table because friendship implied that you could stomach something more than a transactional service. Stomach it you could not.

Nonetheless you get out of the Wraith with nothing but a thin bit of hood to shield you from the worst of the rain. Shuddering and sobbing, you march towards the unassuming building just in time to catch Raven on her boyfriend’s arm opening up for the day.

“Er, honey?” he mutters into her ear, locking eyes with you. “You said your first appointment wasn’t for another hour.”

“Hmm? It isn’t.” she looked between her open purse and his chiseled jaw that flexed with a certain curiosity.

She turns and peers at you for what feels like a decade. Her eyes fix and it takes a second for cognition to wash over her and drag the smile out of her cheeks like the morning tide. 

You’re sobbing, heaving even, it shudders your lungs and you gasp and claw against your chest. “R-Ray,” you mouth a broken sound, “I, I—“

“Help me get her inside.” Raven rushes to your figure and shoulders you weight with an arm wrapped around your slim waist. Her dominant swallows and fiddles with the keys to the practice and that’s when the darkness of your post-traumatic stress blinds you with an episode.

“Lexa it’s okay, you’re okay, I’m here buddy.”

It’s the last thing you hear before you fade out.

...

You pull the Huracan into the gates of the estate and check the analogue clock behind the power steering. Sixty minutes late, you internally groan and glance at the stack of fashion covers for the summer edition of Vanguard that sit on your passenger seat. It’s a poor excuse at best but Father will understand — business has to take a certain precedence even over birthday parties.

Costia however is a different story. You know she will backtalk her way into a spanking tonight over your tardiness and you would really rather not punish her on special occasions but God knows that little wild thing of yours loves to try your patience.

The thought makes you bite your grinning mouth.

There’s gigantic pink helium balloons weighed down around the fountain, pink banners draping around the cladding of the house, pink tealights spiralling around the pillars in the front. It looks as if Barbie and her friends have vomitted over the estate and you can’t help but shake your head and laugh because of course Father would do this for Mom’s birthday.

With the Vanguard covers tucked under your arm you approach the open front door. It takes maybe ten steps, ten individual little moments, ten paces closer towards what should be your mother’s sixtieth birthday party in less than an hour when the guests arrive before it dawns on you.

There was no twitch of the blinds of your bedroom, the universal symbol that Costia knew you were coming up the drive. There’s no loud bristling of your Father walking around pointing at decorations that aren’t just right. Absent is the sound of feet clattering down a mahogony staircase so Costia can be the first to tell you off for being late.

You don’t know why but it catches you alight.

There’s a peculiar absence of existence within the house as you walk through the front door and each step feels like a drum beat against the silence.

There’s the a loud bang, the sharp sound of glass shattering upstairs followed by a woman’s screams. Your feet set themselves into motion with an automatic muscle response and with shaking hands you feel around your thigh for your service weapon.

It isn’t there. You were formally discharged from the Navy six months ago and your service weapon is locked away in the gun cabinet in Father’s office. Your heart is punching your chest. 

You pass your Father’s office and tempt the idea of getting your handgun but you can’t remember the code for the safe and your body is on an automatic course for the source of the screaming. You tell yourself someone accidentally knocked over your mother’s favourite vase, you tell yourself Costia is watching a horror film, you tell yourself all kinds of things.

“Dad?” you yell.

Nothing.

“Mom?”

Nothing.

“Costia?” you finally call with frustration as you reach the last step.

It occurs to you that you the screaming has ceased and you’re not sure when exactly it stopped but the drawn nerve wracking silence leaves you wishing for it once more.

“Get her wedding ring.” you hear a gruff voice disturb the silence, “Quick! We need to get out of here!” it grows antsy and panicked.

“No one was supposed to get hurt! You said no one would get hurt Sir!” another voice yelped.

You burst into your parents bedroom and it’s too late.

The back of your father’s head is more entry wound than skin. One of the would-be burglers is over him, snivelling and barely keeping it together, pulling on the expensive watch around his limp wrist.

Your mother is dying. Blood is bubbling out of a red stain over the chest of her pink dress; she’s choking to death and two armed robbers with their backs turned seperate you from saving her life.

“Sir!” the snivelling boy grabs him as he notices your shadow cast over the room like a blanket.

“Shit.” the master feels around for his gun.

You take off down the hall and head for your bedroom. There’s a hunting knife in your draw somewhere. Adrenalin is saturating every neuron and all that stops you vomiting is the knowledge that Costia is here somewhere and you need to protect her.

The bangs of a gun goes off again and you fall through your bedroom door and land in a heap on the wooden floor. You’re dying, you’re certain of it. You roll on to your back and blood is seeping out of you like the swell of a broken river bank and you know quite certainly you’re going to die now. You have short shallow gasps and they’re not nearly enough but it’s all you can muster.

There’s a broken sob that emanates from the side of you.

You hear it through the loud clattering and ‘Fucks’ and ‘You said she wasn’t heres’ that emanate from the hallway outside the room. Your head rolls towards the sound of the noise and you find yourself peering at Costia hunched underneath the bed. Breathe, you tell yourself… she’s safe there for now.

“Stay put,” you mouth with blood pooling at your tongue, “you be a good girl and you stay put.”

“Mistress.” she reaches for you.

“Stay there!” you hiss and splutter, “You stay there until it’s safe and you go back to your family and you tell them I did one thing right.” you gasp for a little breath. “You find someone good to take care of my beautiful difficult girl.” you can’t help but close your eyes, “But for right now? You just stay there until help comes.”

“Don’t die. If you die… I’m gonna kill you.”

“Just stay put Costia.”

You can hear the men shouting at one another in the hallway, you can hear glass breaking, there’s the distinct sound of your mother’s jewellery safe clicking open and there’s only one other person who knows the combination to that safe. And with this information you know it’s your mother’s new house boy behind this. Him and his master. Your gut wrangles itself in knots trying to understand how your parents kindness could be repaid like this.

“Mistress…”

You breathe and force yourself to smile at her mascara stained face. You can see the remnants of gold eyeshadow. You loved it when she wore gold eyeshadow. It made the green of her eyes deeper if that was even possible. 

“Always difficult, always beautiful.” you smile because you’ll be damned if it’s not the last thing you do.

“Don’t die.” she pleads with you in a tiny whispered tone.

“I’ll try.”

“I am yours and you’re mine so you have to live, okay?” she says it as if it’ll make you stay.

You hear the men spill out of your mother’s dressing room, they’re talking amongst themselves, panicked and aware that Indra and the boys will be back any minute.

“Go! Make sure the daughter’s dead!” you hear the master grunt.

You hear their footsteps draw closer, heavy footed and brisk, you find yourself silently begging an arbitrary universe to let the boy mistake your blood for death and leave in a hurry.

“One in her head for safe measure.” you hear the master add.

“Mistress…” you hear a hollow quiet sob.

You close your eyes and play dead as he stands in the doorway, the sound of his finger pulling tentatively against the trigger is audible along with the noise of something scuttling near the bed and all you can do is pray that for once in her damn life Costia’s doing as she’s told. There’s two gunshots, pain explodes in your right shoulder and then the next thing you’re aware of is something warm and heavy landing on top of you with a thud.

You hear the men run.

“No,” you whimper and keep your eyes clenched close, you won’t open them, you won’t because this isn’t real. It can’t be. You won’t let it exist and so for a moment you keep your eyes closed and allow Schroedinger’s cat to purr around you.

Eventually, open your eyes you do.

She’s gone, it would have been instantaneous, between the second bang of the gun and the thud of her body, her life would have evaporated like a wisp of steam. You’re certain of it from the wound on the back of her head. She must have thrown herself in the way of that second bullet and you’re left hating her in your last earthly moments for it.

A noise not of this world escapes your throat like the manacled scream of a lamb being lead to slaughter. Hazy is the world like a soft focus lense. Costia’s body is warm and all you can do is hold her face to your chest and rock her like a child.

Then there’s nothing.

You wake in a hospital room three weeks later and they’re astounded you're alive. You shouldn’t be. They tell you that as if you don’t already know it and you want to tear the wires out of your skin and let your heartbeat simmer into a quiet nothingness like before. Anya doesn’t let you though, she’s there, red eyed and very much the singular person you have left in this world. She holds your hands to the bed when they sedate you and once more…

There’s nothing.

…

You come around to find yourself clutching a square pillow beneath your chin, curled up on an uncomfortable sofa, sobbing a violent hollow cry with your head in Raven’s lap.

“It’s okay.” she hushes you and from the glare of sunlight that cuts a leyline through your eyes over the cusp of the building outside you know you’ve both been here for hours.

“Costia.” your voice aches and mumbles, “Where’s Costia?”

“Your name is Lexa Woods. You’re twenty-eight years old. Two years ago your family were killed in a robbery gone wrong, you were shot twice, once in the shoulder and once in your chest.” she tells you these facts about yourself slowly.

“You’re here with me, Raven Reyes, at the therapy practice. You used to come here after the accident but… it’s been a while.” she explains away and you feel more tied to reality listening to her drone.

“Did I hurt anyone?”

“No, god no honey.” she tells you and runs her hand over your head, “Well, you kicked a fire extinguisher but I think between your foot and the extinguisher… the extinguisher won.”

“Good to know.”

“What the holy hell happened, Lexa?”

“I, I, I need…”

“Take your time,” your old therapist tells you, “I’ve cleared my schedule for the day… what do you need?”

“I need you to help me.” you force yourself to admit those dreaded words and clench your eyes closed. “I, I, I met a girl and I thought I could just take of her and that would enough, and it was, it was enough or at least I thought it was and then she went and kissed me and I lost it—”

“Slow down.” she wraps a hand around your shoulder and you rid yourself of a long deep breath.

You realise you're still lying with your head in her lap and you couldn’t be more embarrassed. Well, you know that isn’t strictly true but this is a close second. You sit yourself up and wipe the still moist trail of tears off of your neck.

“I’m sorry I just turned up like this. It was wrong and I shouldn’t have bothered you Raven… I, I should make an appointment and come back another time.” you steady your expression into the stoney facade you wear so well.

Raven just rolls her eyes and chuckles.

“Lexa,” she clears her throat, “do you remember our rules?”

“I do.”

“Good.” she replies and reaches for the hourglass on her desk and all of a sudden your gut ties itself in a particular kind of knot.

The hourglass represented the start of a session and once the sands began to slip through the bottleneck, the roles were reversed and you allowed her to take control for just long enough to dig down into the parts of your trauma you were too forthright to let see the light of day.

“Lexa I want you to come here and tell me from start to finish, as slowly as you like, everything that has happened with this girl.”

“Yes Miss Raven.” you mumble the bitter words in your mouth and remind yourself of something your father once said.

There’s a little submission in the act of dominance and a little dominance in the act of submission.


	9. Chapter 9

"Do you love her?"

"No."

"Let's try that again, do you love her?"

"Absolutely not."

"Lexa?"

"Yes?"

"Do you love her?" Raven tries again softly, her fingers clasped around your shoulder to steady your kneeling figure.

"I don't know." you finally admit and hate yourself for your lack of certainty. "It's not love, it's something else, it's something desperate and sad."

"Well that's a starting point." Raven reassures you and combes her hand down your hair tenderly, "Tell me more?"

There's a tide that sloshes around inside of you as you sift through yourself looking for feelings and thoughts that you can correlate back to Clarke. There's sadness and joy and laughter and hope and anger and confusion and all the things you otherwise lack. It's been three weeks since your meltdown, three appointments in the interim, and approximately zero nights spent sharing the warmth of your bed.

In fact both Clarke and yourself have kept your distance from one another. Gut wrenching, totalitarian, deprevating as it may be, you do well to avoid eye contact when you brush past her on the staircase. You've proven masterful in polite little banal exchanges over dinner. Still, you refuse to allow her to kneel for you anymore, always with some kind of pithy excuse that leaves her pearl-eyed and restraining her facade into an unphased nothingness. You're well aware she does it for your benefit.

"Lexa?" Raven clears her throat and moves her fingers under your chin, "Tell me everything." you're reminded.

"She makes life," you nibble and pause, "she makes it more."

"You're not exactly TED Talk material you know that?"

"I'm aware."

"What does she want?"

"More."

"Of what?"

"Me." your eyes flicker and Raven identifies the root of the problem immediately, appraising you with her fingers gently tilting your chin.

"You're just not ready, are you?"

"No. It's not that." you shake your head.

"Then what?"

"I'm scared that I am." you blurt.

At that Raven leaned back in her chair and you can all but shuffle uncomfortably on the balls of your knees. It clicks into place like a chambered bullet, and she can't help you with this, she can't drag you into knowledge you already know.

The appointment ends and you book in for next week, hood shirked up to hide your face from the rest of the waiting room, Wraith parked outside the dental office two blocks away just in case anyone should recognize your plates. You like the brisk cool walk between your car and the office before and after your sessions, gives you time to decompress or compartmentalise, depending on the subject for discussion, and expertly gather yourself into a reserved indifference by the time you get home. 

There's something that sits heavy in the void of your stomach the entire drive, your very being weighed down by a premonition, a merciless, violent premonition of trouble waiting for you at home. 

It lends itself off the back off your post-traumatic stress, that's what Raven says at least but this time it's different. You struggle to place it at first but then you catch a glimpse of the newspaper on your passenger seat, Friday September 23rd embossed in the left hand corner of the off-white paper, today is Roan's plea hearing and you made a vapid promise over dinner some nights ago to wait for news with Clarke.

Air escapes your lungs like wisps of smoke off a dampening fire and though your foot punches the accelerator it does nothing to unburden you of this tiny betrayal. Nonetheless, you shave ten minutes off of the drive but it's still too late. You know it to be true the moment you pull the car up the drive and the staff peek out of the window with covered mouths muttering to one another.

Indra dares to approach you first, careful and doleful, her eyes averted to the ground as you stride towards the front door.

"That bad?" you ask, raised brows.

"Worst." she tells you solemnly.

There's a silence that is unbecoming of your home. Normally there is the sound of the kitchen clanging and hissing with preparation for dinner, or a few select maids hustling through the corridors with a vacuum, or even the faint whirring sound of your mother's garden being tended to. It doesn't go amiss upon you that today there is nothing, not a peep.

You should wait to ask, you should find Clarke and apologise and ask what happened, then, once all is well, that's the opportune time to kill Anya for calling ahead without your permission. It takes a moment but you relent of your own volition, storming through the hallway to the kitchen with Indra footing behind you quickly, absolutely collapsing under the knowledge you have no right to put Anya, or anyone for that matter, in their place because Clarke is not yours.

"Miss Lexa?"

"Mmm?" you call over your shoulder absently.

"Lexa." Indra grabs your shoulder and halts you. "Stop, just, be still for a moment." she calms the air with her bare hands.

"Just how bad is it?" you dare to ask.

"He's plead not guilty-"

"Son of a bitch!" you yell and stick your boot into the radiator. "Where is Clarke?"

"Lexa-"

"Where is Clarke?" you hiss, eyes aflame.

"She's packing. Clarke contacted Miss Anya and wishes to be moved out of state before the trial begins." her voice trailed off, eyes searching the room, avoiding your puffing figure at all costs.

You move through the house like a natural disaster, maybe a cyclone or a tsunami, your desperation hangs in the air like breath in the morning frost and you climb the stairs two at a time to her room.

You burst in and she's there, red eyed, folding the meagre shirt she arrived in and putting it away in her plastic bag. The clothes you bought her are folded neatly on the bed, there is a little notepad beside her and you fixate on the scrawled additions and multiplication on the page. It cools your stomach into glass.

She is calm and collected by force, you can tell by the painful quiver in her throat. "I'll pay you for everything, once I have a job, the first thing I'll do is get you the money for the clothes-"

"Shut up." you blurt, infuriated at the thought of her paying you anything more than a smile.

"I know you're angry-"

"Shut up."

"Okay." she sets the shirt down on the bed and stands still, "Are you telling me to shut up as my friend or my ad hoc dominant?"

"Both." you shudder and step forward, unable to batten down the beast in your chest that claws your heart, furious at the thought of being alone again. "I'm not angry Clarke I'm…" you feel out the gnawing in your heart that feels so much like anger, "I'm ashamed. I wasn't here and I told you I would be here-"

"I don't care about that." she softens and blinks back tears.

"I do! I told you I would be here and I wasn't, I failed you, you have to care about that because if you don't then I can't imagine how broken your heart must be not to allow yourself this pain."

"He probably knows I'm here," Clarke muttered and denied herself the urge to peer into your earnest eyes, "Master. He, he wouldn't plead not guilty unless he knew for certain there was a way to keep me quiet."

"Look at me." you almost plead, your voice burrowing into the vibrations of your quivering throat, hands pulled out of your suit pockets reaching for her hands. She gently brushes you off and it makes it all the worst. "Please look at me." you unnaturally beg and she finally caves.

"I make myself tiny because it pleases you. I watch you deny yourself of me everyday and I take it again and again because in some small way it's the only way you'll allow me to give you my submission, Lexa." Clarke inflicts your name and stares at you.

"I don't know what you mean-"

"You don't, or you don't want to? I would carve my heart out and lay it at your feet and be as tiny as you need me to be for all the days you'll keep me, but if you think for a second that I'm going to let him take you from me-"

"Wait what?"

"You have another thing coming." she puffed and cracked open mercilessly, "I, I shouldn't bring you into this."

"Clarke," you step forward tentatively, uncertain of this new boldness she possesses. "I can't help you if you don't tell me what's going on."

"You are a good thing, Miss Lexa. You're kind and gentle and… soft." the tears pool and glisten her cornflower blue eyes, "I know the depths of his cruelty, my back is littered with reminders of it and he has a plan to make me go home, I know it. If he found out for a second that I loved you he would find a way to snatch that away from me too. That's what he does to good things, he snatches them away from me and rips them up, but if I keep you here… if I go now…"

"You love me?" you blurt and step forward.

"I would run and never stop if it meant keeping you safe."

"No." you tell her and boil in the words, "It's my job to keep you safe." you say with exasperation.

"But here _isn't_ safe." she tells you empathically, and all you want is to wrap her in your arms.

"Get your bag." you nod towards the clothes folded on her bed and ghost out of the room on to the hallway. Indra is already there, eavesdropping, pretending to polish a vase on the bureau. "Indra, go and put my weekend bag in the car."

She glances up at you in shock, her mouth curling from an indifferent bird mouthed expression into a surprised smile, it offsets you at first but she grabs your shoulders and pulls you into her arms.

"I knew you had it in you." she squeezes your arms and like a phantom, if you keep your eyes closed, it feels so much like your father's embrace.

"Wait, you're coming?" Clarke stumbled into the hallway.

You can't hold yourself back, you don't even try, the wood is slick beneath your feet as you scurry so fast to her you think you might slip and take her down with you but sure enough your arms find her waist and your hands settle at the bottom of her back and your tongue is brushing against hers as you deepen the lock of your kiss.

You feel her fingers weave behind your neck and scalding tears that don't belong to you wetten your cheek, it's this tiny little sequence that pulls you from her plump pink lips, her eyes flutter and stare into yours and you think you might die.

"It's my job to keep you safe." you tell her, nose pressed into the apex of her cheek.

"There isn't a hotel that will give us a room-"

"Unless you're claimed?" you raise your brow.

She nods uncomfortably.

"Then I guess you better be my girl, huh?"

She looks at you, appraising the grin burrowing into your face, the heady intoxication of your stare, you know she's waiting for you to snatch this away because good things don't happen to girls like her. She waits but you keep her there, grinning and patient for her to see this is real.

"You… you're being serious?"

"If you want to be some other place than here... I want to be there with you Clarke."


	10. Chapter 10

Dusk was aflame, burning into the deep purple of the evening sky with orange that streaked the wind like wildfire. Everything withered in comparison to it, the deep green of the trees blurred into an insipid nothingness and the fields of golden wheat you eventually passed dimmed from an aureate splendor into a bland yellow beneath the beauty of the sky.

You drove for six hours straight south of Bennington, through roads lined thick with summer trees that danced and cheered you on with waving green hands and winding highways that slipped on endlessly until eventually you were far over the state line and Anya's jurisdiction. The entire time, there was a content lack of speech that remained rarely interrupted, it consisted of curious smiling glances between the two of you and Clarke's sheer wonderment at the terrain that slipped by outside of the car window.

Eventually, the flaming winds started to give in to the all consuming blanket of star speckled night and you finished the last bit of distance to the lake house with your coat slipped around your girl, gently dozing with her head bumping your shoulder, assured in her safety. 

It felt strange to let that thought settle in your head, your girl.

It wasn't official yet, not until Anya forced you to endure a tongue lashing of epic proportions about your impulsiveness before she'd eventually relent and process the necessary paperwork. For now the paperwork was quickly signed and faxed off to Anya, you didn't stick around for the inevitable reckoning, instead you bundled the both of you into the Wraith and hit the gas.

You tempered a little smirk and peered at Clarke, now your Schroedinger's kitten of sorts, and tried not to let yourself grow giddy at the sight of her.

"Quit it." she mumbled and adjusted herself into the frame of the door.

"Quit what?"

"Staring at me."

"Can you blame me?" you muttered and felt embarrassed for smiling.

At that she let out the softest chuckle and you, brooding and expertly ill-tempered you, found yourself dripping through her hands, melted and compromised in a way you swore never to be again.

"I like how assured you are in yourself." you muse and slip your hand into hers. It's foreign and nice, you could get used to it you decide.

"You like me when I'm frustrated. You like someone to challenge you now and again, I don't think many people want to play that game with you…"

"I'm a sore loser."

"You're not Miss-" she stops herself and bites back that dreaded word. "You're not." she settles and pats your hand.

You pull up to the lake house and for a moment you expect your mom to rush out of the front door and usher you inside to a bustling dinner table but the lights are off and the thick coating of time has settled the house with paint chipped off the white wrap around porch and leaves piling inside the gutters.

"We're here?" she touches your shoulder and you flinch.

"Sorry," you quickly reassure her fallen smile with a kiss to her knuckles, "We're here."

"It's not what I expected."

"I haven't been here, since, you know-"

"Costia."

You flinch on that word and stuff it down into your belly, it lasts a moment, a few months ago it would have been enough to send you into an episode but today it hurts and you suffer through it briefly and then the pain dims away.

"She loved it out here." you sag into your seat and give Clarke an earnest smile, "I think you will too."

"How long are we staying?"

"Until there's somewhere else you'd rather be."

"Could be a while Miss-" Clarke bites her bottom lip and eyes you apologetically, "Sorry." she blushes.

"Miss is fine, Lexa is fine too, whatever works." you kiss her head and climb out of the car.

She follows to your side and helps you with the bags though there isn't much to carry. Hand digging through your satchel, mouth between your teeth whilst you explored every nook and cranny, you finally found the keys and set them in Clarke's hand.

"Get the fire going." you urge her with a nod towards the front door.

"I've never…" she blinks at you and processes what you just said, "you want me to start a fire?"

"You'll realise what I mean." you roll your eyes and smirk. "Go and figure it out, explore, get into trouble, I'll be right behind you." you gingerly gesture her towards the house with a grin.

She's soon out of your sight and dishevelling the thick layer of dust that has no doubt laid claim to the lake-house. For a moment you wonder what lost and forgotten memories you'll find inside, it terrifies you, seeps into the pit of your stomach like a corrosive and violent acid but nonetheless you refuse to let it thin your resolve. Instead you hunch yourself around the bags in your arms and get yourself over the threshold of the porch with little reminders of Raven's advice.

To your surprise the house is nowhere near as dusty as you thought it would be. It smells of emptiness like you've returned home from a long summer vacation but there is something so consumingly familiar and warm about this place. The way the wooden floorboards creak and the timber beams overhead open the restrictive proximity of the hallway into the vastness of the living room. Then there's the view, magnificent and emerald, the entirety of the woods refracting off the last light upon the lake.

"Look," Clarke kept her amazed stare out of the window and gestured for you to take her hand. "It's beautiful." she whispered.

"I own it."

"You don't." she chuckled and tenderly traced her thumb over your knuckles.

"This lake, these woods, this house, it's all on private property my father bought years ago. You don't have to worry about anyone disturbing your privacy up here." you gingerly reassure her.

"That's very kind of you," she said quietly and leaned into your arm, "but you can't own something as beautiful as this. It's like trying to conquer a slither of time or scale a music note, all you can do is exist in how brief it is and admire it."

"When did you get so wordy?" you chuckle and sit in the wonderful thickness of her words.

You feel her tense against you and feel the immediate cool pang of guilt sit in the pit of your stomach. "Sorry," she looked to the floor and bit her mouth. "I can be quiet."

Wanting and desperate and needing and dying, you leaned into her warmth and kissed the top of her hair, then the corner of her eye, the apex of her cheek, the top of her ear, slowly and purposeful in your ministrations until she loosened and grinned into your explorations.

"The sound of your voice is just about the only thing that stops me going off the deep end."

"So you don't want me to be quiet?" she hummed and tentatively traced her fingers over the buttons of your shirt.

"I want you to be anything you want to be." you assure her and tuck pieces of soft blonde hair behind her ears.

"That's cheating."

"It's honest." you remind her and gingerly press a kiss to the curve of her mouth, she kisses you back tentatively at first, then with a forced bit of spine she lets her hands drape behind your neck. There's an affection in the tiny act that leaves you breathless and wanting of more but Raven's words ring in your ear, baby-steps, baby-steps, and more baby-steps.

You both settle in and spend some time unwinding, Clarke stoking the kindling in the giant stone fireplace and you grilling cheese sandwiches for dinner. It's peaceful and easy being around her, she doesn't ask for more than you can give, she just stokes you expertly like that dry kindling until you're burning with nothing more than her eyes and smile and little words as the fuel in your belly.

"Here," you call her and set the grilled cheese on the breakfast bar. "Get it whilst it's hot."

"Yes Ma'am." she jokes and skips over, the word making your knees soft.

"I, erm," you find yourself stuttering and pulling off the crust of your food. "I-"

"Was it something I said?" she covers her chewing mouth but fails to hide the frown.

"No!" you respond a little too quickly, "It's just been a while since I've done this and I just want to get it right…"

"What can I do?" she asks gently and traces her finger over your clenching hand.

"Help me feel this out?"

"Tell me what you're scared of?"

"Permanency." you blurt and see a flicker of hurt slather her soft gaze. "Not you, just, the thought of… I don't know-"

"Hurting?" Clarke prompts you softly.

"Yeah."

"Me too."

"Do you think it goes away?"

"I think we just try the best we can."

"I care about you… so much." you barely whisper and feel the need to protect her throttle you until you're a breathless mess.

She smiles at that, smiles so big it reaches her eyes and you can't help but join in with a little shake of your head to boot. "I know you do." she reassures you and squeezes your hand. "I meant what I said earlier."

"I know."

The rest of the meal passes in silence but your mind hums and splutters with all kinds of quiet excited ideas of what your time here could look like. The things you could do, the places you could visit, the walking trails to show her, fishing and swimming and hiking and… you stop and remind yourself not to get carried away.

Eventually the food is devoured and to your surprise soft hands, itching and nervous for your approval, almost forcefully guide you to the sofa in front of the fire and rummage in the bag for your current book and reading glasses. Clarke stops just shy of sitting the glasses on your face, instead she just places them in your hand whilst you stare at her dumbfounded until she's off again in the other direction.

She clears away the kitchen, washing the dishes and drying them methodically, stacking plates and drying the counter and you watch every second of it awestruck.

"Can I help?" you ask far too late into the chore.

"Mmhm," she nods and drains the sink, "you can keep looking at me like that and let me do this for you, that would make me a very happy girl indeed."

"There must be something I can do?"

"No Miss, thank you." she tells you and turns pink.

You sit back and appraise the sudden tenseness that sits the room, your days are filled with little moments like this, sudden shifts in the air that leave you wondering whether something is wrong and how it can be fixed without prying too deeply. It's certainly developed your investigation skills, the first cracked case was the broken latch on the window she failed to tell you about for a month in fear that you'd accuse her of breaking it. Then there was the methodically wrapped bits of food stuffed in the back of drawers, brought to your attention by a stiff-nosed Indra on a particular housekeeping excavation of the guest bedroom. 

These things were quietly cured, minimally discussed, the latch was fixed and you made a point of explaining as calmly as you knew how that you would never take her meals away as punishment.

Leaning back in your seat, leg folded over your knee, chin resting boredly into your palm, you evaluated the scene like a Nancy Drew of sorts. Eventually one thing stuck out to you, the frying pan she seemed to spend minutes drying every inch of. You slowly realised the distance between the hook and the ground was too big for her to reach by herself. You wondered why she didn't say anything but you quickly imagined yourself in her place, how difficult it must be to tell a dominant you were incapable of doing something, how nerve wracking the prospect of asking a dominant for help must be when you're never entirely convinced they won't punish you.

Wordlessly you moved the short distance between your seat and her figure with a soft smile worked into your cheeks. Gently, carefully, considerately, you slipped your hands around the pan in her hand and hung it on the hook.

"There," you kiss the blush out of her cheek.

"You shouldn't have to-"

"I wanted to."

"But you cooked and I-"

"I _wanted_ to." you repeat yourself a little firmer and take her hand. "But, if odd jobs mean that much to you I can pick up a step-ladder from the hardware store tomorrow." you promise and give her hand a little squeeze.

"What else would you like to do tomorrow?"

"I was hoping you could plan something for us." you suggest and lead her back to the sofa with your arm wrapped around her.

"What kind of things do you like?"

"I don't know, things." you shrug.

"That isn't helpful Miss." she earns a sharp little chuckle as you flop down and pat the space beside you.

"I don't know what I like anymore… help me figure it out."

Clarke huffed and settled beside you with a smirk. "I gladly accept your challenge."

"Gladly, huh?" you raise your brow. "You change your tune-"

"Are you my Mistress?" she blurted the question out of nowhere.

"Fast." you finished and blinked, running a hand through your dark hair. "Wait, what?"

"I'm sorry I shouldn't have just interrupted you and I know you don't like that word but I don't know how to ask and you keep looking at me with… I don't know... happy eyes and I didn't want to get ahead of myself but you did claim me and now I, well, I think I'm pretty much doing just that and-"

"Slow down." you halt her and still the wringing hands in her lap. Clarke visibly sighs and deflates just slightly and you take advantage of the break in her nervous rant. "Is that what you want?"

Her eyes glass up and her nostrils flair against the urge to cry and you want to make it better, as difficult as you are, as quietly selfish as you are, you want to make her happy.

"Clarke…"

"I," she bites her mouth. "I, just, I'm scared that you'll..."

"Clarke, is it what you want?" you ask her again and shuffle closer, intoxicating her with your proximity.

"Yes." she tells you and flinches. You see the fear emanate from her, roll off her in insurmountable waves, terrified that you'll say no, already convinced of the fact.

"Then yes, I am, of course I'm your dominant." you relent and softly prod her side with a little grin, your lack of reservation about it almost gives you reservation.

She tackles you into the sofa with clingy arms that slip around your neck and the tip of her nose digs through your loose dark hair until it finds the long expanse of collarbone she often liked to nuzzle when you allowed her to sleep in your bed. You tempt the idea of gently escaping, but you feel her hot stinging tears soak into your skin, you feel flowers threaten to bloom there like you're a seed she's watering, all you can do is slip your hand around the most bottom part of her back that you have permission to touch and let her have your proximity as she hooks her hips into your stomach.

"I'll make you so happy," she mumbles with big wet eyes hidden from your view, "I promise, I'll take care of you and I'll be good and I'll make you happy." she whispers again and again.

You lie there for an eternity, eyes closed, forcing yourself not to cry, allowing yourself to be owned and domesticated by this sweet little creature that will not let go of you. She eventually stills her heaving chest under the ministration of your hand slowly stroking her hair but her hips remain hooked into you and your neck rests against the arms she refuses to untie.

"You good?" you finish softly petting her after your neck starts to cramp with the passage of time.

"Yeah," she murmured.

"You wanna come out now?"

"No, thank you."

"I think you should." you instruct gently and with it Clarke appeared dutifully like a wild little beastling, soft and messy and teary-eyed and still perfect, you chastise yourself for the last part. Baby-steps, you remind your brain. "Do you want to talk about limits, wants and needs?"

"You already do a great job." she assures you with red-rimmed cornflower blue eyes.

"That was before…" you bite your mouth and exhale through your nose. "If you're mine I need us to have limits and needs at the very least."

"Can you go first?" she pulls her knees to her chest and stares at you like you're the first day of middle school calculus.

"I'm not ready for you to call me _that_ word. Call me anything else, call me Miss or Lexa or anything that pleases you, but not that word. Not yet."

"That's okay," she shuffles forward and slips her fingers in your hand. "I don't want you to ever call me… names."

"What do you mean?"

"You know." Clarke rolled her eyes up to the ceiling where the bedroom rested above you both. A moment passed and still you continued to blink at a loss to her inference until the silence grew too much for her to bear. "When we're in bed I don't want you to call me a slut or a whore or any of those words." she tightened on a breath caught in her chest.

"When we're in bed?" your eyes widened.

"When we're having-"

"I know what you meant." you quickly cut her off with a lifted palm and blink. "You want to… you're ready for that?" she faintly nods and digs her chin into the lip of your sweatshirt that clings to her skin. "I would never call you those words." you whisper so earnestly the thought of her ever hearing them from someone else's mouth very near kills you.

"Promise?"

"I swear it."

"I still want you treat me like you would if I wasn't a little messed up... just please don't ever hit me as punishment."

At that you find yourself kneeling in front of her, your hands rubbing her knees, your eyes searching hers for just a lick of trust to settle within her that you would never do such a thing.

"I will burn every belt in this house if it makes you feel safer with me."

"Your pants would fall down a lot."

"So be it." you raise a brow and earn the slither of trust you were looking for.

You exchange little promises. You'll try not to shout when you're mad, you tell her that with a kiss to her knee. You'll let her sleep in your bed, you kiss her palm, assure her that your bed is her bed too. You'll never let another dominant touch her, you promise and kiss the tip of her finger and clench on the little request, the thought of it makes you boil.

Your limits and needs are a long and crucial list of things to be obeyed. You reel them off methodically, guilty that there's so many, you start with the most important and unbreakable vow, that she must tell you immediately if she wants something to stop. No questions, no pause, just an immediate no. She's hesitant at first out of a learned distaste for refusing her dominant's desires, but you coax it out of her and she promises you faithfully. 

Next is no questions about your family, she nods. Safe words and a quantifiable amount of quality time spent together during the day and therapy sessions you want her to attend that she dug her heels in and refused before, all of it earns quick responsive nods from her. The list is boring and lengthy but she nods in all the right places and you're glad when it's over and done with.

"What things can I do to make you happy?" she asks you tentatively as you get up off the rug and flop back down in the sofa.

"Well I told you all of my limits." you shrug and close your eyes, exhausted of talking to such extents. 

The warmth of her body creeps up your legs first and stills at your belly, her head resting against the space beneath your ribs, fingers wound tightly in your cotton shirt. You can't help but grin, eyes still closed, chest vibrating with a little laugh, grinning endlessly at how pleasant all of this is.

"I know your limits, but tell me the things that make you happy, the things you need and want." she settled an ear against your figure.

"This." you sigh, "I like you being quiet and clinging to me. You're like a baby monkey."

"Duly noted Miss."

"I like when you talk in the morning over breakfast and tell me things whilst I'm still sleepy."

"Mhm,"

"Back rubs. The feeling of someone getting this knot that's always just underneath my shoulder blade. Space when I'm sad. Room to breathe. Reading to someone. Telling someone what to do. Someone doing what I've told them to do." you say it all absentmindedly. "What can I do to make you happy?" you open a single eye and peer down your chest at her.

"Have me kneel for you… I don't want to ask for it, I want to be told to." she tells you and the urgency of it jars you out of your lulled state, "And, and, I like it when you're stern sometimes. Not all of the time, but when you are your jaw flexes and your shoulders get bigger and I like looking at it."

"Anything else?"

"Tell me that I'm good and call me nice names."

"And?"

"Let me get my own way once in awhile." she smirks on the last bit and you flop your head back with a relenting sigh.

You linger on her appraisal of your dominance, on her desire for you to exert it over her, on her need to be small for you and praised by you. It's almost too much, like a rich taste that you've gorged yourself on until your sides hurt but the hunger burrows deeper and you're still not quite full. Baby-steps, you warn yourself on the threat of a cold shower.

She's looking at you as if she's waiting for something and you know exactly what it is, but you keep her there, hanging and dripping in her wait for instructions. She's beautiful like this, blue-eyed peeking at you through wisps of aureate golden hair that almost glimmer in the reflection of the flickering fire opposite the sofa. Sprawled over your stomach and content beneath the ministrations of your thumb rubbing her ear with a quiet affection.

"Get on your knees." you induce the flex of your jaw over the urge to smile giddily.

"Wha-"

You cut her off with a small kiss and stroke the length of her nose with yours and force yourself to accept her autonomy and ability to tell you no, reminding yourself of her promise. "I don't want you to ask questions, just kneel, right there." you place a cushion on the floor and kiss the side of her head.

"Yes Miss." she melts and does as she's told.

She gets into position and slips her hands over your kneecaps and you feel something you once thought had died long ago renew itself deep within you, like a rekindled flame, a lost page found, a door unlocked, it comes back to you with an unforgiving immediacy. She is so beautiful and perfect, so insular and small and desperate for something only you can give her and it sets you in motion.

"Beautiful," the word feels hot in your mouth, but you raise her chin and force her to meet your gaze. "You are _my_ beautiful girl."

There's a breath that escapes her on the belonging tone of your language, she clenches her eyes closed and you watch her swallow and swallow until the ache in her throat is cooled. She is so beautiful and you do not deserve her, you don't, but by some miracle she is yours and you will not ruin this. You will not lose another one.

"Are you comfortable?" she nods but it isn't enough, "Speak, please."

"Beyond words," she melts into every second of this and dips her face between your knees out of sheer necessity to be closer to you.

You stay there for a moment unsure on what comes next, you could sit in silence, it would be more than enough for the both of you but instead you reach over Clarke's figure for the book and reading glasses on the coffee table. Quickly settling yourself back down with a pair of hands scrambling to find your kneecaps again.

"Put your hands here." you take the liberty of moving her palms up your legs to rest at the middle of your thighs. "Good girl." you praise her quickly and flick through your book in search of the dog-eared page you read last.

"Do you want me to read to you?" you peer down your glasses.

At that, she nods and though you force yourself not to stare, you can't help but notice the few tiny stinging tears and little snivels that she staves off, arching her neck into your lap between her forearms in sheer contentedness. 

You keep her right there and begin to read slowly to her.

 


	11. Chapter 11

You awake in a cold sweat from a perfect nightmare with Costia still on your tongue. It's early, too early for this bullshit. Then again in some small way that was always Costia, wasn't it? Always inopportune and fleeting. She loved you, loved you as if it was her singular purpose, did it with an intensity that transcended the furthest pin-pricked constellations that spattered the night and made it look effortless the whole time.

It was never effortless, never easy, never for a second, but you were always content in the knowledge that she was difficult in her own ways too. Costia lived and breathed and fought and decimated you as if she were a natural disaster, an acclimation of the beautiful and terrifying. Costia was devastating, devastating because only the tragic is allowed to be as perfect and untouched as she was.

She comes to you in dreams still and you wish to fucking god she wouldn't. Last night you saw her across a golden hotel ballroom, it was New Year's Eve, the party in full-swing. She wore the same dress she wore to Anya's wedding and stood at the bar contently staring at you with two glasses of champagne and a smirk you're ashamed you almost forgot.

"Hello lovely stranger," she whispered in your ear as you fought the urge to collapse at her feet. "Miss me?"

"You're not real." you whispered back, dying beneath the reserved. You wanted to reach out and touch her but she was a dream, an amalgamation of your brain filing and ordering her away like overdue paperwork.

"Since when did we ever let a little thing like that stop us having fun?" she raised her brow and killed you, or at least it felt that way. "Dance with me." she commanded you brattily the way she always did.

Dutifully you took her in your arms and didn't dare to close your eyes for a single second in case the world around you crumples to ash. 

The dance floor is an endless purple galaxy beneath your feet and your third grade teacher is marking your science project in the corner of the ballroom. Costia doesn't let you disappear into the abstract though, she slips her hands around the small of your back and tethers herself to you.

"You met someone." she hums thoughtfully and spins under your hand.

"She isn't you." your voice aches into your open mouth.

At that Costia laughs, gloating in the victory… you forgot how competitive she could be. It passes after a moment, her triumph melting into a tender sincerity. "Mistress, she doesn't have to be me." she assures you and buries her warm nose into the nook of your neck. "I don't think you could survive another me."

"Me neither." you chuckle and feel guilty for it.

"Be soft with her… tender and kind and tell her you love her often." Costia reels it off so fast you struggle to keep up, "Bite your tongue sometimes, be stern when she doesn't bite her own, buy her poppies when she's sad and daisies when she's happy, be a good Mistress, Lexa."

"You haven't called me Lexa since-"

"We were children." she finishes your sentence and drags her fingers down the lapels of your naval uniform. "But you're not my mistress anymore… you're hers."

"That isn't true-"

"It is and you know it." she warns you with a perfectly raised brow, pearl-eyed and trying desperately not to cry. "It's okay, it's good, it's more than good." she shakes her head and reassures your heartbroken expression. "Love is wonderful."

"I don't want you to go." you beg.

"I'm already gone." she takes your wet red cheeks in her gloved hands and presses a fleeting kiss against your mouth. "We were amazing, weren't we?"

"Too good for the world." you force a tiny laugh and wipe your eyes on the back of your sleeves. "If I could have it all back, do it all again, I would have still chose you."

"It's time to start choosing Clarke." Costia tells you with a soft smile.

Mrs Latimer awards your bicarbonate soda volcano first prize and the universe beneath your feet cracks open into swirling smears of light that devour the stars. There are strawberries in your mouth. You don't remember how they got there, and as if Costia can read your mind, which she most definitely can considering she is just a projection of it, she bursts into laughter and spins in your arms one last time. This is how you want to remember her, you decide.

"I'm never going to see you again, am I?" you barely mouth in sudden realisation.

"Of course you will." Costia suddenly stops and stares at you earnestly, "Do you remember what you scrawled in the flowers for the funeral-"

"Don't you dare." you warn her with a hiss, too happy to be reminded of such terribly sad things.

Costia bites her mouth and gives you a softening look, the closest to an apology she offers. The chandeliers overhead shakes as the morning starts to dig its fingers into your dream, the strawberries in your mouth are sweet, Costia cares for none of it and carries on anyway.

"Do you remember what you wrote?"

"Mmhm." you nod, not ready to let her go.

"Somewhere beyond right or wrong, there is a garden. I will meet you there."

You awoke after that with a jerk, sweat pouring off of your body like you were the earth rivers ran through. Gasping and dying, you tried to be grateful for the dream. Even the ones that make no sense, the ones where she's a librarian and you're trapped in a loaned out encyclopedia are better than the nightmare of the last time you saw her in the flesh.

You look over to your side and Clarke is still asleep, buried beneath blankets and so perfectly alive and untouched by the past. Her nose wrinkles on a little huff, but soon she rolls over and settles again with a leg hooked around the blankets, desperately escaping the heat.

"Lexa," she mumbles your name and an arm flings backwards to feel for your reassuring shape.

"I'm here." you whisper, pressing a kiss light as breath against her temple. "You're safe baby, go back to sleep I'll wake you up in a little while." you hum into her hair and she settles again.

You escape the bedroom and retreat downstairs where there's coffee and space to breathe. Unfortunately, there's no Indra, which means the coffee and breakfast will be nowhere near as satisfying.

The view across the lake makes up for all the bad coffee in the world though. You and Clarke talked about what you might get up to today, spoke about it dreamily whilst she dozed in and out of sleep in your arms. She wanted to go swimming, you told her the weather would be too cool for such things but she was adamant and you were exhausted, so you agreed.

"Good morning," she yawned and crept up behind you, bare-legged and warm in your sweater.

"I told you I'd wake you up." you complain and roll your eyes, pouring the coffee and rooting for creamer that you realise entirely too late you forgot to pick up from the store.

"You had a nightmare and I wanted to check on you." Clarke tells you gently and presses a kiss to your jaw, "Good morning."

"You said that already." you smirk.

"Then I'll say it again, good morning." she teased with a grin.

"Good morning, baby." you hum and let her lips warm your own.

There's a knot in your stomach, it's formed of smaller knots that have tangled themselves into bigger knots and you're stuck trying to unravel them all and still appear unphased. Clarke is beautiful, magnificently so, it draws breath from your lungs just to look at her, but the taste of strawberries linger in your mouth and it feels wrong to be so achingly mundane and normal.

"What did you dream of?" Clarke asks you and clears the sleep from her throat with a stolen sip of your black coffee.

"Nothing." you lie and smile.

"Nothing or nothing you want to tell me about?"

You flash her a small look and raise a brow, that small act is all it takes to soften her inquisition and earn casted eyes. "Sorry, I know I shouldn't pry."

"It's okay." you brush it off and wrap your arms around her, "You only ask because you care… I know that. I do."

"Did you dream of Costia?"

"Clarke…"

"Did you?" she looks at you with wide eyes and a sad frown, "I don't mind if you punish me, some things are more important than being good. I want to know what goes on in your head, how you think and what you dream-"

"Yes, okay." you admit grumpily and cross your arms, "She was there, so was my third grade science teacher and my old drill master, it's no big deal." you wring your hands and take a gulp of coffee.

"Well if you change your mind you can always talk to me."

"I said I'm fine!" you snap and immediately feel guilty for it.

Clarke flinches at your outburst but softens, her white knuckles dissipating like the brunt of storms. She doesn't look at you, instead she peers off at the floor, that's what punches you in the gut the hardest.

"I'm sorry... I shouldn't snap." you sigh and scratch the messy wisps of dark hair at the nape of your neck, "I'm terrible in the mornings." you admit with a small regretful smile.

Your irritably wasn't a natural state, it was acquired through mourning. There was a time when mornings were a blank canvas and then after the funerals, every morning was a spatter black paint and a long smear of grief. The whiskey helped that, it numbed you long enough to sleep through dawn and day until you woke up with a list of urgent things to consume yourself with.

You can't remember the last time you drank, what's worse is that you don't know if that fact is good or bad.

"I'm sorry." you repeat again.

"It's okay you didn't mean to snap." she reassures you.

"Can I hug you?"

"Not right now but maybe in a little while." Clarke squeezes your arm and gathers her nerves, "I know we said we'd go swimming but can we hang out here today? I don't want to share you."

"With mother nature?"

"Not even her." Clarke grinned and shook her head, and you felt better for earning a smile.

"What shall we do today?"

"I want to watch movies, please."

That tiny request stops you dead in your tracks as you navigate the kitchen tidying small things away. You try not to pause for too long, but you can't help letting the sensation of victory settle in your stomach. It's the first time you think you've ever heard her directly say she wants something for herself.

"Good girl." you praise her quickly and stop yourself wrapping her up in your arms, instead you settle on a quick peck on the cheek instead. "Blankets and ice-cream?"

"No pants?" she says with a smouldering flicker of hope.

At that you roll your eyes and undo the drawstring of your navy pyjama pants, kicking them off with one fluid movement and sending them across the room to hang over the lampshade.

"Better?" you exhale and feel the chill attack your legs.

Her eyes are staring, you feel them appraise every faint mole and the dug out scar on your tan knee. There's a power in this, it makes you feel sublime to own her wanting gaze, you wish you wore the black mesh thong that makes your ass look infinitely better but the Calvin's are working just fine.

Baby-steps, Raven's voice rings inside your wandering mind.

"I can put my pyjamas back on?" you suggest after a moment of silence.

She blinks first, opens and closes her mouth and remembers how to formulate a sentence again. "I'd really like it if you didn't Miss Lexa." she almost whispers.

"You gonna be my little spoon?"

She nods eagerly at that.

"Well," you muse and swallow a gulp of warm coffee. "You better go and get the blankets then…"

 


	12. Chapter 12

"Are you fucking _insane_ Lexa?"

You wince at the venom of Anya's words, "It's really not as bad as it sounds." you soften.

"So you didn't steal a ward of the state?"

"I suppose I did." you sigh quietly into the phone. "I did send the pre-requisite paperwork though."

You sent Clarke upstairs to take a bath and relax the minute Anya's name flashed up on your phone, and yet you can't shake the feeling that she's perched on the stairs listening to the conversation. It makes you smile and it shouldn't, you'll have to be stern and disappointed if your suspicions are correct but for now, the idea of her being naughty amuses you perhaps only for the knowledge that she trusts you enough to misbehave from time to time.

"I'm happy." Anya bristled unhappily, "I am. I just… are you ready for what comes next?" she exasperatedly sighed.

"We're a while away from marriage yet."

"No you narcissist I mean the court dates."

"Oh," you stumbled and reality punched you in the belly. "Of course."

"If you love this girl then I will do everything in my power to keep her with you but her old dominant-"

"Roan." you interrupt her. "I don't want to be reminded of the things he did to her. So you call him Roan around me, understood?"

"Understood." you listened to her sigh, "Roan isn't some coal pit hick, Lexa, and his lawyer is already sending me subpoenas like their fucking birthday cards. I need you to come home so we can take care of business."

"Soon."

"Soon isn't soon enough-"

"Just give me a few days! Christ Anya!"

The conversation drones a little longer, hesitant with your answers and careful with your words, Anya eventually grows tired and makes quick goodbyes. The call ends and you can finally breathe and set the phone down on the counter, hanging your head and rubbing your temple, avoiding the unavoidable and busying your mind with images other than the shrivelled shell of a person who turned up at your doorstep months ago. 

The remnants of that ghost have all but disappeared except for the fresh pink scars on her back that you're not allowed to touch. Clarke is alive now, laughing and breathing and smiling and misbehaving and eager to earn praise. Renewed and reinvigorated, this version of Clarke is the most beautiful creature to ever breathe, you're sure of it, and you will not let her be shrivelled ever again.

"You can stop hiding now." you call into the empty, smirking and waiting for it.

Her footsteps slowly thud down the stairs and you hear her sigh guiltily.

"Were you eavesdropping?"

"Yes, Ma'am." she murmurs and appears at the arch. Your smile drops, her shoulders are small and her chin is tucked into her neck, she stands there the same way she did in your office the first time you met and maybe it's just because of today's events but you want to vomit at the memory of it.

"Babygirl what's wrong?" you soothe gently and beckon her closer.

"Lexa don't let them take me back." she peers at you with blue sapphire eyes that shine with held tears. "Please?"

She hasn't used your name since the evening you put her on her knees and read to her until she cried soft happy tears. It's different in her mouth now, it's tentative and sad and desperate and afraid that the sad ending that's always in her periphery is finally here to close the last chapter on her.

"Will you come and kneel for me?" you ask her softly and she nods.

You sit by the fireplace, hesitant and thoughtful, you formulate sentences in your mind and none of them seem to capture the essence of what you mean, the ones that do, your body refuses to say them. _I love you._ You want to say it, you need to say it, because you do love her and day by day the trapped words in your gut poison you until you're a languid eyed mess of a woman. But you don't say it, you don't because you can't and that's okay… some things take time.

She kneels at your feet with her jaw resting on your kneecap and stares at you, heartbroken, like a library watching first-editions being burned for kindling.

"Do you want to be here?" you whisper and smile, tucking a piece of hair out of her ear. "What does my girl want?"

It's still one of your cardinal rules that she uses possessive language and reiterates the things that she wants and doesn't want. You desperately want to make a show of your dominance and reassure her that no one will take her from your grasps, but these subjects are sensitive, and you are not him. You're not. And so you wait patiently for her to tell you what _she_ wants.

"Wherever you are, that's where I want to be."

"Then I won't let _anyone_ stop you doing just that." you promise with your teeth on the word, because you both know _anyone_ means him.

Clarke smiles and you can breathe again now, she smiles, she smiles and you feel it mop away old memories just a little more each time she does it. Smile again, you will her in your head, smile and don't stop smiling because you're certain it's the thing that brought you out of the hole you crawled into and you can't bare the thought of going back now.

"We're both a little messed up, and that's okay. It's alright. It means we're alive and we're trying, and no matter how long it takes we're going to figure out how to tidy the mess away. Okay?"

"No." Clarke pats your knee tenderly and closes her eyes, rubbing her cheek into your thigh. Loving fingers softly trace along the ridge of her hairline and push back displaced pieces of hair and she smiles into your gentle gesture. "She died Lexa." she whispers sadly.

"Who?" you blink, forgetting for a second.

"Costia." she whispers again and your fingers flinch away. "She died." she tries to grasp your fleeing hands, "Your parents died and I know you nearly died too. I don't know what that feels like and I can't imagine it but he… he hurt me." she bites the inside of her mouth and staves off pearly eyes. "Sometimes I don't think he meant to, but he did, and I try to live with it as best I can so I do know what that much feels like. So, no, I don't think we can clear messes like that away. Just learn to live with them."

You exhale, there's blood in your mouth from where you've bit your cheeks too hard and the pain is welcomed with open arms. It gives you something to distract you with from her unavoidable truths.

"Okay." you lie with a soft smile, because you're anything but.

You spend the rest of the day like that. Hurting and seeming otherwise, dying beneath your veneer of control, heaving on the nothingness of your aching heart. Everything becomes more violent because of it. Your midday walk around the lake is silent and brimming with inescapable truths that fuel your quick thumping pace, the kind that makes your nostrils flare and jaw grind. 

Clarke tries to earn praise and you're barely able to pay enough attention to nod in the right places. You watch the way it hurts her, her blue eyes flicker into little pools of longing achiness and her mouth curls into a forced smile above the dull pain of your denial.

Somehow, out of necessity, duty-bound, you pull yourself out of your wallowing long enough to give her small praises through dinner. It's taken a while but she'll eat a whole meal in front of you now, and today she does just that, perched inside the hollows of your thighs on the sofa, she picks at her casserole until the entire plate is clear and the entire time you absently rub her back and praise her softly every time she nearly loses herself in old sore memories.

It wasn't long after she arrived that you learned why she didn't like eating in front of you. It frightened her. The rules of her old life were too deeply ingrained to just simply let go and every mouthful in front of you was an unbearable challenge until she'd eventually crack and start to cry. She wasn't allowed to eat at the table in her old home, her food came from what was left on his plate, and you didn't ask what the punishment was for her disobedience because you knew your stomach wouldn't hold it.

Any other submissive, you would keep them at the table all night until they ate enough to satisfy you, but with Clarke you let it slide and allowed her to eat in the kitchen once your watchful eyes became too much. So long as she ate and started putting on a little weight, that was the first challenge.

Now, on her better days, she eats in front of you. On her worst you coax it out of her bite by bite.

"Hey." you hum and recognise the rapid blink in her eyes, she did that when she was nervous. "You're a good girl," you whisper and press a chaste kiss to her hand. "My good girl."

She nods and puts her knife and fork down on the plate. "Do I get to… you know."

"Choose what we do tonight?"

"Mhmm."

"I didn't think I would be allowed." Clarke admits and looks at you guiltily. "You were angry with me all day."

"No, little one." you fight the urge to gasp and inch closer. "I wasn't angry with you." you cup her cheeks and guide her flitting eyes to yours. "I was… upset," you tell her diplomatically, "but not with you."

"Then with who?"

"No one, babygirl. Sometimes I'm angry just because life isn't fair. But that isn't your fault, you make me very, very, very, happy." you punctuate each word with a kiss to her forehead.

"Promise Miss?"

"I promise." you hush her and slip your arms around her body. "So tell me then, what are we doing little one?"

"Can we take a bath together?"

You hesitate and meet her intentful little stare, she's determined tonight will be the night and you see it within her. You helped her bathe in the beginning, it became a ritual of sorts, you would sit on the step of the shower and make her feel safe whilst she was at her most vulnerable. But you've never climbed in the bath with her. Never allowed her to see the scars on your chest. Never allowed her to touch you.

"Miss I'm ready." she whispers and slips her fingers inside of yours. "I promise."

"Fine," you relent and roll your eyes.

"Like a submissive and a dominant?" she whispers hopefully and you know what she means, she wants to wash your hair and clean your skin and tend to you like a submissive cares and serves for their dominant.

The thought of the intimacy terrifies you, you don't know if you can stomach fingers working over the divots where bullets tore through your chest and back. You're not sure you can allow another to look at them. No one saw your chest, no one except for Anya and that was purely because she was the only one strong enough to pin you down whilst the nurses changed the gauze and bandages over your chest. She never spoke of it and you were grateful for that much. Clarke wouldn't offer you the same courtesy, assured you are in that knowledge, she will ask questions and want details.

"Okay babygirl." you find yourself saying anyway, rubbing her back. "Go and run me a bath. I like the soft towels from the linen cupboard and the chantilly soap and shampoo in the drawer."

"Miss Lexa," she licks her lips and looks away, "Those things are in your parents room."

"And?"

"You told me never to go in that room Miss."

"I'm telling you now, aren't I?"

"Yes, Ma'am." she bows her head softly and you melt at the sight of it. "So I'm allowed?"

"Yes, baby, you're allowed. Now go draw the bath before I change my mind."

Clarke gets off the sofa and you watch her gather the dishes and take them to the sink, absolutely drunk on the way she moves when you allow her to submit. You take her submission in short measured bursts, slowly acquainting her with it once again in a controlled environment. It's always small things, tender orders, gentle demands, sweet instructions. She calls you Miss or Ma'am, always thoughtful never to let the wrong word slip off her tongue.

"Clarke?"

"Yes Miss." she says attentively, loading the dishwasher.

"What are you doing?"

"Cleaning, Miss."

"Come here." you beckon her with your finger and point to the ground immediately in front of you. "What did I tell you to do?"

"You told me to draw the bath Miss, I thought I should-"

"Ah ah," you softly interrupt her and flex your jaw for her benefit. "Mistress."

"What?"

"I want you to call me Mistress for the rest of tonight. Is that acceptable to the submissive?"

Clarke is stunned, standing there and blinking at your tender demand. "Yes Mistress." she finally says, visibly deflating in relief and savouring every syllable of the forbidden word on her tongue with the biggest smile you've ever seen her wear.

"I understand you wanted to please me, little one, but I told you to go before I change my mind, not load the dishes."

"I'm sorry, Mistress, I'll never do it again." she kneels down and bows her head between your knees. It makes you giddy, you have to bite back your excitement, because god is she beautiful, and god is it easy to get carried away with this game, and god, of course she will end up doing it again and you can't wait for it.

"You're forgiven." you softly murmur.

"Will I be punished, Mistress?" her mouth fits around that forbidden word as if it's almost too big for her mouth.

"Not on this occasion, but in future I would like you to think about situational judgement and following instructions as I give them. If you continue to disobey me…" you dip down and let your hot breath tickle her neck. "I will take you over my knee."

Clarke groans into your beautiful threat and your arousal surprises you.

"I'm going to count down from five and if you're still in my sights when I get to zero, I'll be bathing alone. Five." you clear your throat. "Four."

Clarke is scuttling down the hallway before you get to three and you gloatingly smirk into your dominance. It suites you being dominant, you're good at it, the right mixture of stern and gentle and everything inbetween. Your girl has yet to give you a reason to punish her but you can't wait for the moment she does so you can show her the satiating relief that comes from an expertly administered punishment for both parties.

But for now, there's other ways to show her satiating relief and you're going to use all of them and earn enough smiles to save some away for rainy days.

 


	13. Chapter 13

Sore and stuck, you hover, crouched over the surface of the bath. It's hot and satiating but you struggle to let yourself beneath the water, your hands covering your breasts and therein your scars, which out of the two, you were far more self-conscious of the latter.

"What's wrong?" Clarke asks astutely, her brow furrowing with concern. She gazes at you longingly from her spot against the furthest wall beside the bay window, "You can tell me, it's okay…"

"Mistress." you reiterate, wasting no time in softly correcting her with a firm look no matter how unbecoming your current situation is. "I would like you to suffix a question with Mistress, okay?" you smile, and she smiles too.

"For longer than just today, right Mistress?"

"We'll see." you briefly smile and put down the fire in your belly.

You were terrible this morning; too caught up in the bitterness of the past and not at all attentive to the wonderfulness of what your todays look like. She is painfully yours and you've known it for months now. There is no one but you. She seeks comfort in no other, and you have turned her away and softly cast her aside time and time again for fear of breaking your own heart. No more, you whisper to yourself. 

You have spent months teaching her to speak and want and need and desire, and the words rolled off her own tongue, she is ready. And it's time for you to start listening.

"I want to hear it again." you murmur, lovingly stern, and glance at the faint features of her face for just a hint of resistance.

She nods, and you know she trusts you. "I'm ready and I want this. I want you, Mistress." she looks at you with this deep intensity in her eyes like you're divinity itself.

The cusps of the sun at dusk reach over the trees outside and refract the window she stands beside. It makes you blink and look away, you put it down to the brightness of the light but the unwelcome truth is that she is beautiful and you are vulnerable and you _cannot_ mess this up.

"Good girl." you breathe through your gnawing voice, nodding, badly hiding the desire to sob. "I'm ready too."

You force yourself further beneath the slosh of the water, body slipping down the porcelain of the bath, you eventually submerge yourself completely. 

Eyes closed, beneath the water, you stay there and count to three. One, you are her mistress, you have made yourself her mistress, act as such. Two, this is progress and you both need progress. Three, you are falling in love with her and the only way she will stay by your side is if you give her a good enough reason. You check these things off like a list of reminders and pull yourself up again, righted and soaking to the bone.

"Hi, Mistress." she smirks as you wipe the bubbles out of your eyes, gloating on the forbidden word that she is allowed to use freely, for now.

"Hey pretty girl." you smile and slip wet hands along your dark dripping hair. "Come here." you tap the side of the bath and sigh, ready for progress.

She obliges you obediently and makes quick work the wooden floor to kneel at your side. From where you're stretched out in the tub, you see her blue eyes and the soft slip of her nose behind the porcelain lip of the bath. It's barely a fraction of her and somehow, it's too much beautiful, too much wonderful. She is exactly what you need. You are an undeserving beggar cloaked as a queen, basking in her presence.

"How can I serve you?" she asks with downcast eyes.

Clearing your throat, your wet fingers slip beneath her chin and tilt her until she's looking into your eyes. "Wash my hair and clean my skin." you softly order, forcing the manacles of a mistress over your nervous figure.

Your voice is more inflicting for it, chin rising with dominance and eyes adjusting into a reassuringly in-control stare. You know what you're doing, or at least you make her believe as much. "...Is that acceptable to _my_ pretty girl?" you very tenderly inflict the possessive adjective.

"It is, Mistress." her voice aches into her happiness with shameful watering eyes that she cannot bare you to see.

"Look at me," you command as she discreetly wipes them away and tidies herself. Slowly, she relaxes into your control and does as she told, peering at your lips waiting for words. "My good girl," you hum the words, "we can go as slow as you want. I have no expectations today. Are we understood?"

"Yes Mistress." she smiles, crying.

" _My good girl._ " you whisper it again and again with languid eyes, sometimes loud enough for her to hear and occasionally barely beneath your tongue as she moves around the bathroom collecting the things she needs.

Like a fine tuned machine you feel like you can read her now, understanding the way she works and the way she thinks. Clarke is terrifyingly easy and wonderfully complex simultaneously. She doesn't like it when you raise your voice, so you don't. She likes it when you flex your jaw, so you do. Then there's the silent requests that she's still too tender to speak into the hollow. She likes touching the wispy bits of your hair and curling them in her fingers, always too terrified to ask for permission, you make it so that she doesn't have to — even though you've _hated_ having fingers ran through your boisterous hair since you were a little girl.

"I've been looking forward to this for a long time." you hum as she lines up the bottles and runs the faucet, adding more hot water between your feet. "You know how much I like it when you play with my hair." you smile and lie sweetly. "Do that for me tonight?"

"Yes, Mistress." she breaks into a small smile. "I love playing with your hair when we go to sleep, you snort like a baby pig." she promises and you chuckle at the comparison.

"I wasn't sure…" you sigh. "I didn't know if you did it just because you knew how happy it made me?"

"It makes me happy doing things for you." Clarke chuckles, tucking a piece of blonde hair behind her ear as she squeezes a dollop of soap into her palm. "Knee?" she requests softly.

You oblige and lift your knee from the water.

Gently, she rubs the soap into the wet slipperiness of your skin and massages the joint. She moves so slow, so reverently, fingers following every crease and delving into each dip of your joint. You smirk to yourself because you know she's going to keep you prisoner in this bath until you're wrinkled and shrunken, somehow, you don't mind a bit though. You sigh into the satisfaction of the way she touches you and know you could quite happily stay here for a whole day, shivering and hungry but entirely loose beneath her hands.

"I love touching your hair… I love that you ask me too." she whispers and starts to list all of the things she loves doing for you. "I like that you insist on making me dinner and that I get to tidy up your mess."

"My mess?" you laugh.

"Oh, you're definitely messy." she playfully scolds you with a little glimmer in her eyes as the soap froths your skin. "I love it. I can map everywhere you've been in the kitchen and there's intimacy in being the one to tidy it all away." she softens and stares at you, fingers slipping behind your knee to work the muscle there. "Is that okay, Mistress?" she asks, thumb pressing the tendon.

"Perfect." you groan and close your eyes. How long has it been since someone touched your skin? Years? You can't remember… you don't want to either.

"...I like going to bed before you and curling on your side of the mattress before you get there so it's warm when you climb in. You hate cold beds." Clarke explains and smiles into her observation.

"You do that for me?" you tilt your head.

"Mmhm." she nods, quickly catching herself in the act. "Yes, Mistress." she corrects her tongue gladly.

She always slips upstairs ten minutes before you do, always astutely reading the slow blink of your eyes and fiddling of your glasses as the kind of sleepy exhaustion you could never quite stave off. You just assumed it was so she could change and get comfortable without the overbearing presence of a dominant lingering around.

"But then your side of the bed is cold?" you think aloud.

"I like having a cold pillow, besides, you warm me up." she gloatingly smiles at that.

"I'm glad I serve some useful purposes for you, pretty girl." you shake your head and smile too. 

There's a glass of scotch resting on the side of the bath, Clarke brought it up for you whilst you changed out of your clothes. Your once constant crutch has now become redundant, it's been at least a fortnight since you even had a sip for any other reason than the aged taste. Eyes closed and in a state of strange serene, you indulge yourself and bring it to your lips to take back a sip, feeling loving hands slip down your leg. This is a bizarre state of perfect you never could have anticipated this morning.

Your leg rests in her hands whilst she lathers and massages your skin, she is entirely occupied and existing in each one of her careful movements, you shy away from breaking her concentration. Instead you just relax into it and enjoy the simpler pleasures of dominance, ironically, they were the first ones you had forgotten first.

"Mistress?"

"Mmm?" you hum and open an eye.

"What's your favorite song?" she works fingers down the grain of your muscle.

You pause on that, unsure and stuck in the strangeness of the question. "Why do you ask little one?"

"I want to know you."

Smiling, you think for a moment. "Nocturne Op. 9, pretty girl." you muse and close your eyes.

The first time you heard that song you were ten years old. Clear as yesterday, you had crept downstairs for a glass of milk and caught a glimpse of your parents instead. They were always careful to be Switzerland around you; never eager or wanting for you to see the more intricate intimacies of their married life. But there you stood, stuck on the stairs, watching curiously whilst mother laid sprawled out over father's lap, his cumbersome thick fingers softly touching her beautiful hair whilst she read pretty poems aloud for him, the tinkling of the piano echoing around the room.

"What music do you like?" the words roll off your tongue, pulling you from the memory in a brief daze.

"Christopher Marlowe."

"He was a poet."

"I wasn't allowed to listen to music… I read instead and they sounded like songs in my head." Clarke's fingers nimbly move back up your legs towards your thigh, "Is this okay, Mistress?" she checks, allowing her fingers to rest just shy of the midline of your thigh.

Embarrassed and sore on her words, you nod and slip your fingers along the skin until you're touching her hand beneath the water. "More perfect than you know." you reassure her, thumb slipping across the back of her hand.

"Okay," she whispers back with a tiny smile, and you are drunk on the blue of her eyes.

"Will you tell me your favorite line from one of your poems, pretty girl?" your eyes stay closed and you rest your head against the back of the bathtub, allowing her the moment necessary to think of such things whilst chantilly soap is worked into the deepest muscles of your thigh; unwinding every knot and loosening every trouble. 

Slowly, her hands stop, and you blink your eyes open again. "Come live with me and be my love," she whispers nervously, eyes blinking fast. "and… we…" she pauses, chewing her lip, lost in a terrible memory you're certain.

"And we will have all the pleasures prove." you tell her slowly and finish the line of the poem. "It's one of my favorites too, little one."

"Really?" her eyes twinkle.

"Mhm."

"I put you down as a Samuel Daniel kind of girl."

"And what about me would give you that impression?" there is a lightness within your voice as you begin to ache into the immense depths of her touch, soap slipping against your skin once again.

"Fair is my love, and cruel is she fair…"

"My muse had slept, and none had known my mind." you ache softly into a whisper, thinking of Costia because quite aptly, your muse did take her eternal sleep just like the end of the poem. 

It didn't hurt as much to think about now. It was sad and it was bitter but the gnawing pain was no more… just a soft achy kind of hurt that drifted away with a merciful quickness. 

"I'm definitely more of a Christopher Marlowe bleeding heart." you smile briefly, and her face relaxes from the nervous expression she'd tensed herself into.

"Can I ask you a question, Mistress? About… her?" she licks her lips.

"One."

"What is your happiest memory with her, Mistress?"

Weeks ago this question would have been impossible. Your nails are sharp in the flesh of your legs and your jaw is tense — you don't notice these things until you hear her desperate little apologies in the background and suddy wet hands slipping into your jaw. You hear Raven's voice in your head next, demanding it of you that you don't slip into an episode.

"It's okay, it's alright." you force your eyes open and nod into the sound of Raven's demands until they become second nature. For the first time in years, you're ready for this. "I want to give you my best memories of her… I trust you with them." you force the tiny promise off your tongue and lean forward to kiss Clarke's temple. "It's okay pretty girl. You didn't do anything wrong." you mouth hotness into the hollow of her ear, making sure she hears you this time.

You earn what you seek, Clarke relaxes into your personal space and softens against the edge of the bath. "I'm sorry if I caught you off-guard..."

"You didn't. I've been waiting for you to ask for days, I absolutely knew it was coming." 

"I'm that easy to read, Mistress?"

"Terrible poker face." you chuckle and exhale a drawn breath. "There was a vacation we took to Verona together. We got lost in acres of summer fields and picked blood oranges. I ate three of them, and we napped underneath an olive tree." you shake your head and laugh, the memories make you happy like you always wanted them too and Clarke smiles, listening contently. "Anyway, that was how we learned I'm allergic to blood oranges."

"Allergic?"

"Horrifically. We missed the opening night of the opera for an emergency room whilst she chased busy doctors around, ranting in Italian, adamant that I was dying." you chuckle.

"Were you?"

"No, thankfully, my tongue was just swollen." you laugh at the memories. "I had a lisp for a week."

You watch Clarke try not to laugh at that.

"She assured me it was very cute." you pout.

"I'm sure it was, Mistress."

There's a softness to this that is easy on your heart. "Come," you whisper, "get in here with me where it's warm." you tap the edges of the bath.

"Is that…" she blinks, uncertain of what you're asking. "Am I allowed to do that, Mistress?" Clarke wrings her hands and seeks your reassurance that you really mean what you're asking; that she is allowed to be naked against you and you won't let her down, you'll be gentle and deft and tender in all the ways she needs you to be.

Of course you will, you are her Mistress now.

"I make the rules, little one." you remind her, so lovingly stern. "And I say, if my pretty girl wants to, she can come lie right here with me." you gently pat the wet spot of your chest that peaked the water. "And if she doesn't that's more than fine too."

"Oh, she wants too." Clarke mouths through the glimmer of a nervous skittering kind of excitement.

"Then, if it is acceptable to my submissive, I'd like you to take your clothes off and come take a bath with me…"

She rises from her spot on the wooden floor. Suddenly, it's you who is now terrified. Of course you'd seen the girl naked before but on the occasions you did she was a blue and blooden husk curled in your bath.

But now she is alive, she is the best of what you yearn for and beautifully delicate in all the ways that send your nerves prickling into the enormous rapture of your fear of failure.

She takes her shirt off first and you blush at the sight of the colour in her belly, tan with life and fillen in the hollows. You refuse to let yourself reflexively look away, you are her mistress now, so instead you smile and watch her intently, and in turn she relaxes into your dominant gaze.

Her cheeks pinken into the boldness of your gaze and she moves too cover her breasts— "No." you tell her softly and she hesitates for a moment. "I want to look at you."

Her eyes flicker, face full of contempt for herself. She needs your pretty words and soft hands and loving instructions. She needs the love of her mistress.

"Why?" she mumbles.

"So I can die happy one day." you grin and mean every word. "Is that a good enough reason?"

"It's a start Mistress." she lets her hands fall too her sides and exhales. "I'm…" she sighs, "I'm sorry if I'm not good at this."

"No. I won't have that." you shake your head again, the plump boldness of your voice lulling away her doubts. "You are too much perfect and wonderful for me to ever suffer listening to you insult yourself."

"I don't think—"

"Ah ah." you raise your finger. "That wasn't a question inviting of a reply, Clarke."

"Okay Mistress." she nods, voice tiny and smiling into your words. "Okay." she whispers.

"It's okay that you're nervous, we can stop whenever you want—"

"I don't want to stop." she blurts suddenly and the urgency of it pauses you for a moment. "I'm sorry I interrupted you, ma'am, I don't want to stop, please." she flinches into the error of her interruption.

"Okay then." you rub your thumb into the back of her hand, relaxing her with physical little promises that you're not him. "We'll take things slow and figure out what's okay together?"

"I want that so much." her voice yearns and all she wants is to be against you in the rapture of your hot skin.

The heat that rushes to your core quickly resumes as her fingers tentatively undo the clasp of her bra. It falls away to the floor and you are left with an unwelcome arousal climbing the chimney of your throat.

You'd never looked at her breasts before. Whenever they were there, you turned your gaze just slightly or focused on the floor out of respect for her dignity, but now they are here, all for you, and you are stuck in stiffening pink nipples and the tiny slouch of two perfect handfuls of breast that you have yet to take, arousal seeping over the tips of your teeth now.

"Are you okay?" her brows furrow, and you realise your jaw is tensing.

"I want to undress you." you tell her firmly, desperate beneath the reserved. The water shifting around your figure as you lean against the side of the bath. "Is that okay?" you hum.

The air is steaming with condensation from the hot bath and it settles the room like a faint mist against the glass and mirror. Her tongue slips just slightly against the top of her lip, thoughtful in her pause, you wonder if you've pressed too far.

"Do you trust me to do that?" your fingertips tenderly reach out and slip along the back of her hand again, leaving goosebumps in your wake.

"With everything."

You shift and pull yourself up until the waterline rests against the backs of your calves, dripping and golden, you take pride in the way she travels each inch of your body with the faintest glimmer of wanderlust in her eyes.

"Please will you undress me, Mistress?" she whispers tentatively, aching for you and the loving touch of your hands.

You answer by finding purchase either side of her hips with your wet palms, pulling her slightly towards you. "Is this okay?" you hum, denying yourself the pleasure of taking her lips.

Clarke nods.

She lifts her legs one at a time as you take her pants slowly to the ground, then her underwear, until eventually she is naked and entirely, absolutely, devastatingly, too much wonderful for your eyes.

"Am I… do you think I'm… am…. is this…" she stutters, mouth full of words and throat gnawing with sharp anxieties.

"Slowly." she obeys. "It's okay to take your time." you encourage her.

She's never had a dominant touch her like this. She's never had loving hands rests on her hips or draw down the beautiful softness of her arms or find purchase in her tiny pleasures and it nearly breaks your resolve. But you are her mistress, faithfully so, and it's your job to take care of her and reassure her fears, no matter how long it takes her to voice them.

 _"Am I good enough?"_ she begs you softly for the reassurance of a mistress, crying.

"Too good for me." you promise her so quickly the words fly out of your mouth. "Too good for anyone." you breathe and guide her fingertips to your mouth, laying a little kiss against each pad of her finger.

The words settle over her like a quilt and she wraps herself around each one. "Do you promise?"

"On my life."

"Okay… that's, okay." she nods and rubs her neck, feeling silly. "I believe you."

"Come here, Clarke." you hold out your hand.

She takes it and steps into the warmth of the bath. You lower yourself first, back pressed against the rim of the tub with your thighs spread open. She settles between your legs and waits in anticipation to lean into you and feel you out. You order her softly, gently, reverently; all beckoning fingers and raspy vowels until she obeys and leans into you.

She doesn't want to have the scars on her back touched and for that reason she lies forward with her side pressed into your gut and chest, cheek against your collarbone and arms slung either side of your body. It's perfect. It's everything you thought it would be and it's too much wonderful.

"Can I put my hand just here little one?" you mouth against her ear and tap a single finger against the very bottom of her spine.

Slowly, she nods into your shoulder. "I trust you, Mistress."

"Good girl."

You lie there quietly for a few minutes, both of your bodies are winding limbs of gnarled trees; the hotness of wet skin and the warm body slung over your bones make it hard to see where you finish and she begins. Throat burning, nostrils flaring, windpipe tight; you stop yourself sobbing through sheer force of will. This is wonderful. So happily mundane and intimate and unbelievable. She is naked in your arms whispering tiny things into your throat and you hate yourself for denying her, but most of all, _you,_ this beautiful closeness for so long.

"Mistress?"

You peer down at the blue eyes devouring you. "Mmm?"

"I want..." she pauses and appraises herself, swallowing away the fear you've taught her she doesn't need anymore. She's allowed to use possessive words, she's allowed to say _I want_ and _I need_ and _will you please_ without the reflexive terror that you'll strike her. "I want to hold your hand?"

"You know how much I like it when you use that word, don't you?"

"I'm trying to be better at it."

You slip your deft fingers inside of hers and give them a reassuring squeeze. "What else do you want, Clarke?"

She mumbles something beneath her breath into the slip of your skin.

"Clearer, please." you smirk playfully and roll your eyes.

"I want to kiss my Mistress."

You pause on that, embarrassed by your sudden and depthless arousal, knowing it's time for you take control and ease yourself back into the role you were born to play. You've made yourself blind to the graze of her dusky nipples and the fingers that accidentally brushed against your own out of necessity. But the knowledge that she desires you and wants to submit, it leaves you simmering until you're afraid the gentle sloshing water might start to boil over.

"I'm going to tell you what I want my pretty girl to do and if I ask you to do something that you don't like, I want you to tell me to stop and we will try something else. Is that acceptable?" you whisper into her ear, voice filled with the heaviness of your dominance and yet, still, she giggles in her giddiness.

"Yes ma'am, I think that's a good idea." she purrs, and you feel yourself slicken on the sound.

"Good." you smile briefly, tensing your jaw the way she likes. "Come and sit across your Mistress." you tap the small of your belly and slip further beneath the water.

She does as she's told, yes mistress, thank you mistress, the words rolling off her tongue and swimming inside your veins until you're drunk on it. The water sloshes up against the bathtub as you shift positions, her thigh slings across your hip and you feel a soft patch of hair settle beneath your stomach and badly hide your groan in the knowledge that her vulva is pressed right there too.

"Good girl." you reassure her and pull her hands up to find purchase in your shoulders. "Put your hands here." you wrap the fingers around both collars, smiling, dragging your nose against the apex of her own as she dips into the grip on your shoulders. You earn a little satisfied groan into the acclimation of how intimate and new this territory is, you hope it will be the first of millions.

You pull your nose away just slightly to clear your throat again. "I'm going to touch you and kiss you, and I want you to keep your hands on my shoulders. If you want to stop—"

"I'll tell you to stop, Mistress." Clarke promises with that little smile she did when you were beautifully firm about something, excited and digging into your skin a little for it too. "Just please be gentle." she hides her nerves a hell of a lot better than you do.

You tell her what you're doing as you do it. Fingertips dragging up the wet prickling skin of her arms, you whisper against her mouth that you're going to put one of your hands in her hair now. You promise you'll be very _very_ gentle, and you are, weaving damp gold through the lock of your fingers and holding it _just_ tight enough for her to know you're there.

The kiss comes next. You take control and tilt her head to where you want it, lips slipping against hers for just a single desperate taste of her sweet submission. She gives you mouthfuls of it, parting her lips as you sweetly demand entrance with your tongue. There's a tiny breathy moan, it ends far too quickly and you pull back just enough to see her blush. She doesn't make a noise because in her mind, she thinks you want her to be— 

"No, pretty girl." you tell her firmly as it dawns on you. "I want to hear. I need to hear so I know what to do, and what not, understood?"

"Yes Mistress." Clarke blushes, and you can tell from the fluttering eyes and clenching of her thighs that she isn't used to wanting the touch of another person the way she wants yours, but she does, she wants you, she wants her mistress in the way submissives want their dominants.

You kiss her again, slowly this time. Careful not to hurt her you take a gentle deep nip of her plump pink bottom lip and pull it slowly from her mouth, releasing it as soon as you earned the needy whimper you wanted. She gave you two of them, one when you released her lip, and another when you took it again. The second time was a loving threat, you slipped your teeth over the same spot on her lip but instead of nipping her again you kiss it gently and she nearly melted for it.

You kiss her jaw next, moving her hair behind her ear to get the spot you craved. It was the furthest part of her jaw where the smell of an indescribable sweetness always lingered, asleep and drifting, you often buried your nose there in the middle of the night — breathing her in and almost tasting it on your tongue. It's as delicious as you always thought it would be.

Her neck is next, this territory is slightly more dangerous. The bruises are long since gone but the memory of them remain and so you are so very careful when you kiss her neck, before your lips touch the skin there you look at her, and she looks at your flexing jaw and burrowing green eyes, smiling and nodding into all of it. 

"I want it, Mistress." she promises and flexes her fingers into your shoulders where she is kept prisoner. You smile, because beneath the enormous rapture of you ministrations over her body, she still finds the time to naughtily coil one of her fingers around a single piece of your dusky hair; tethering herself to you like a balloon that might float away.

You delve and kiss the skin on her neck, again and again, reflexively tightening your grip in her hair. It's brief and you stop yourself, wanting to apologise for yanking just a tiny bit too hard than what you would have liked so early in this new territory but clear as day, she moaned out into the deep tug of it, trusting you completely.

Her vulva is pressed into you beneath the soft lapping of the water and you swear you can feel her slicken between her lips. Maybe that's just willful imagination, none the less it makes you close your eyes into the almost repulsive desire of how badly you want to feel her grow wet and needy for her mistress in your mouth and on your fingers and most importantly, in the bed you share together. Perhaps one day, you promise the tightening coil of arousal in the very depths of your belly, perhaps.

For now the bed has to remain neutral territory; the bedroom has to be safe and away from your sessions. It has to be the place you can just be Miss or Lexa, calming her from nightmares and holding her whilst she sleeps and waking up to faint breaths against your belly whilst she lays asleep with an ear pressed over your heart — the bedroom has to be Switzerland for now and that's okay. The bathroom can be the warzone.

Your lips move over her collarbones. "I want it." she whispers.

The mole just before her shoulder. "I want it." she whispers.

The puckered divot scar slightly further down. "I want it." she whispers tentatively, flexing her fingers into your shoulders. You kiss her so very, _very_ gently there, reclaiming the broken parts of her until they are yours and you can take care of them the way they should have always been taken care of.

Her nipples are next, swallowing and unable to look away, you hover in front of them. "And here?" you ask her firmly, holding your pause until she gives you permission.

Her nostrils flare with her need for mistress's mouth. "I want it." she whispers.

You're tentative at first, you press a single kiss against the stiffening of her nipple and in response Clarke arches until her head hangs slack and the most delicious whimper you've ever heard leaves her mouth.

"Manners." you whisper into her nipple, teeth grazing the bud in your mouth gently.

"Thank you, Mistress." she aches.

"Good girl." you grin to yourself, the voltage of your arousal amplifies into the power of her want until you finally wrap your lips around the dusky bud and take her in your mouth. She cries out, groaning as you suck and run your tongue around her.

"Miss—" she whimpers, "Can I please take my hands off your shoulders?"

"No." you instruct her with a little hum, kissing your way across to her other breast. "Be my good girl and keep them there." you softly demand it of her.

She whines a little noise but it's soon replaced with guttural whimpers as you attack her other nipple, gentle tugs with the rim of your teeth and hot swirling tongue coaxing the breathiest moans from the depths of her belly.

"Thank you Mistress." she groans as you softly pull her nipple with nipping teeth, releasing it and groaning in your own approval as her flesh pinkins just ever so slightly for it.

Suddenly, she grinds her hips into your belly and you feel her slickness coat your skin beneath the water. Choking into your arousal, you groan and attack her belly with kisses, arching your body into the friction of her grinding core.

"Did I say you could rub yourself on me, pretty girl?" you dare her with languid eyes.

"Please Mistress?" she begs with achy eyes.

You snap like an elastic band. "I'm going to slip my hand between your thighs and stroke my fingers through your folds, do you want me to do that?" you ask, voice heavy and smoked with your arousal, making a small splash as you sit up a little further in the tub.

"I want it." her voice is a needy whimper through her bitten mouth.

You make good of your threat, palm slipping up the inside of her thigh beneath the shallows of the warm water. Never releasing herself of your shoulders, she leans backwards and pushes her hips towards you in her neediness. You grin at that, she is _needy_ for you. Her hair above her vulva is shaped and well trimmed, you linger there for a moment and press your fingers gently into her mons, circling against it to test her response.

With a little moan and trembling hips, she begs you for more, and more you give her. You slip beneath her and feel your nostrils flare as her heady slickness coats your fingertips.

"Mistress..." she almost dies into groan, head lolling backwards as if her bones were conceptual at best. "Thank you," she barely whispers, digging into your shoulders until they are deliciously sore.

You graze lightly over her clitoris and she flinches, "Baby?" you pull your fingers away and wait patiently. "Was that too much?"

"No Mistress," she unwinds the clench of her eyes and blinks, mouth hung agape still. "It just… it's just never felt like that…"

"Like what?"

"Like my belly is tight and I might die if you don't rub me harder."

"Well, we wouldn't want that, would we little one?" you smirk and press into her clit until she slouches forward helplessly and whimpers for you. God, you could get used to this. She is divine and so deliciously aware of herself.

Your fears are completely gone and for the first time in longer than you can remember you are assured and confident in your dominance. You own her, she is yours in this moment, and you know she will take every beautiful stroke and tender touch you give her with unfathomable gratitude… she is your submissive after all.

With that you delve further into the rapture of her desire, fingers slipping along her sex and gently dipping just inside of her—

"Not there!" she clinches into your body and bucks her hips backwards, "Sorry… I… I'm sorry, so sorry, Mistress. Not that yet." she begs you nervously in fear of the punishment her interruption will earn her.

"Good girl." you hush her with a little kiss and immediately take your hands away, slipping them around each cheek instead until she blinks into focus and looks you in the eyes. "I told you if you wanted something to stop, tell me, and you did just what I asked you to do. You are such a good girl." you promise her and nod. "My very, _very,_ very good girl."

"I… _please..._ " she mouths, terrified you won't think she's ready anymore. "I don't want you to stop what you were doing."

"You know that you don't have to do this to please me, don't you little one?" you tell her absolutely, staring with formidable green eyes that she couldn't hide from.

"I know." she presses herself back down into the sinews of your tight belly. "I want it because it pleases me..." you watch her feel guilty for having pleasures of her own.

"Take one of your hands off of my shoulders and show me where you want me to touch you, pretty girl." you softly instruct her.

Alight and relieved, she slips her hand down your collarbone and purposely touches as much skin as she can before she comes undone from your body. You smile at that, the way she naughtily steals touches of your figure because the alternative is worse than the prospect of any loving little punishment.

Gingerly, she takes your fingers and together you slip along her lips and against the bump of her clitoris, she moans little whimpery sounds and you feel her melt into your touch. The game is afoot again, and you know now for certain this time that you can trust her to tell you what she does and doesn't want.

"Manners, little one." you tell her firmly, smirking the entire time as she closes her eyes and hangs her jaw once more. You gladly take her please and thank yous in the form of her blossomed nipples brushing occasionally against yours, but this time you want to hear it again, you want to bottle the phrase and listen to it on repeat.

"Thank you, Mistress." Clarke mouths as you graze in soft circles between her lips and you feel yourself grow bigger for it.

"Such a good girl." you almost purr at her.

Fingers pressing just hard enough against the bud of her core, you earn a natural disaster, she collapses into you like a crumpled mountain. Her forearms rest into your shoulders and her head falls to the side of yours until tendrils of blonde hair tickle you. Her moans are hot on your ear, you are enclosed in the rapture of her and it sends you wild.

"You feel so good." she cries quietly, and you hold her with one arm and destroy her with the other.

"One day I'm going to take you in my mouth right here," you rub her clitoris faster, "I'm going to taste how sweet you are and hold your legs apart and devour you all night until you've given me every orgasm." you whisper each beautiful threat and feel her body wind tighter.

"Mistress—"

You feel the slickness of her coat your fingers until the water is thin against it. "What turns you on?" you whisper, daring her, alive with your own arousal whilst you slide through her vulva.

"You." she barely gets the word out, hanging off your shoulders like moss on a willow tree. "Being a good girl... between your thighs." she chokes on the words, a gasp cutting her short as your pulse against her.

"Between _my_ thighs?" you whisper and burn.

"Mistress, I, I don't think I can hold on—"

"Hold it for me." you encourage her, rubbing gently and sliding through her lips, living for every quake of her lungs into the rhapsody of her carnal pleasure. "I want you to hold it, pretty girl, can you do that for your Mistress?"

"Anything for my Mistress." she whimpers and aches for you.

"Good girl." you circle her slowly with the pads of your fingers and torture her with delicious anticipation. She is quivering against you, an absolute mess of a woman, and yet still you want to take her further, drag her to the furthest depths of her pleasure until she snaps and comes undone for you.

"Mistress," she tucks her nose into your neck and presses her mouth there, kissing you and kissing you and gasping into your skin, "Please tell me again. Please?" she begs you.

"What do you want to hear, my love?" you slip her clitoral hood back and gingerly take fingertips to her exposed little bud. She tries to speak but she can't, you've taken her words away with the soft slip of your fingers until all she can do is shudder and inexpertly grind and fold into you with loud cries of pleasure. "What do you want me to call you?" you tease and grin.

She'll answer you when she can breathe again, but for now she is a sobbing, grinding, frantic mess.

"Ah," you hum, fingers rubbing beneath her clitoral hood, ruining her life. "You want me to call you a good girl?"

Arms slip around the back of your neck and draw you tight until her heartbeat punches against your breasts, sobbing in pleasure, you feel her nod against your shoulder. It's all she can manage.

"My good girl," you rub faster, "you are such a good girl for me." you promise.

"Mistress I don't think I can hold it!" she finally bursts.

"Hold it." you encourage her, rubbing her nipple between your fingers. "I know you can hold it just a little longer." she nods and presses her mouth against yours desperately, normally she would ask permission but you know she doesn't have the remit to talk right now, so you just smirk and tilt your mouth, kissing your desperate girl softly. "That's my good girl," you praise her as she barely holds back her orgasm. "That's it." you reassure her, "Keep holding…"

Her kiss grows sloppy and desperate as you fuck her senselessly. She is absolutely yours now, no question, no hesitation, you know you are in love with her.

"Now." you gently command her, shoulder pumping back and forth as you piston your fingers against her clitoris. "Be a good girl and come for me."

She sobs into your mouth with the rhapsody of her climax, hips grinding, moaning, whimpering, shuddering, aching into her orgasm as you fuck her all  the way through it.

"That's my good girl." you chuckle, watching her thighs and hips quiver for her mistress, you slow your fingers until she finally stops jerking into you.

She aches into her satiation, collapsed and hanging around your neck. "Thank you Mistress." she whispers it again and again, absolutely broken and sore in the most achingly wonderful ways.

I love you. You want so badly to say it. I love you, I am in love with you, I am going to love you and keep you safe. I'm going to get it right this time. All of it rings in your head and yet you say nothing.

"Please don't leave me alone." she quietly begs you with tears in her eyes, arms tight around your neck.

She is so tiny and vulnerable, curled into you and huffing through what you quietly know is her first orgasm. She won't let you go. She can't let you go. She needs to be in your arms where it's safe.

"I'm going to carry you to bed my love." you softly mutter, and you're entirely Lexa now, the manacles of being Mistress slip into the recesses of her orgasm. "We're going to lie down and I'm going to hold you whilst you fall asleep and I am _never_ going to let anyone hurt you again." you hold back the gnash of your dominance.

She nods, burrowed into your skin and unable to let go.

True to your word you take her to bed that night in the hollows of your arms, whispering tender little beautiful things the whole journey, she barely speaks and that is just fine by you. Whatever she wants, she can have it by the dozen.

She won't let go of you no matter how much you barter with her which makes putting on pyjamas impossible, and you take a quiet kind of pleasure in being needed like that. Both of you forgo clothes in exchange for desperate needy cuddles; her slung over your chest while you softly stroke the skin beneath her ribs, promising her what a good girl she is until you recognise the heaviness in her eyelids.

Your own eyelids grow heavy, completely satiated by a perfect evening.

Unwelcomed, you feel her fingers slip up into your unruly loose hair, wrapping and coiling thick pieces of it around her fingers.

"I wouldn't break a promise Miss Lexa, I know how much you love it." she yawns, petting you softly like a little beastling she's domesticated.

"How kind you are." you roll your eyes in the dark and smile at the theatrics of it.

 


	14. Chapter 14

The drive home comes a week later. You were supposed to be packed and in the car by early morning, you promised Anya that much, but Clarke is lovely when she sleeps and so you kept her there. The early afternoon isn't that bad right? It can't be. Not when the sun slips behind the cusp of the trees and Clarke is caught in the dappled sunlight, pressed up against the window watching the world go by. Have you ever seen anything so beautiful? You're not sure, and the fact you're not sure means probably not. You have a fantastic memory after all.

"What are you thinking about?" she whispers, slipping her hand inside yours over the gearstick.

"Nothing."

"Lexa," she prods the side of your gut with a little grin until you relent. "You thinking about me?"

You smile at that, because when exactly did she get so bold and confident? You can pinpoint when she started using your name though. It was the day after you woke up tangled in each other's arms. It rolled out of her mouth so easily, and she was so terrified you'd punish her, but you didn't. You smiled. You smiled because you liked how easy it sounded on her tongue and you liked the way it made you feel. You could tell she liked it too, as if your evening of controlled domination fixed something that was broken for the both of you. She didn't need tiny Miss Lexa's, not when she finally earned an evening of Mistress.

"What are you thinking about?" she teases again, bugging you relentlessly.

"Fine, yes!" you roll your eyes and chuckle. "I'm thinking about you, little brat! Are you satisfied?"

"I'm thinking about you too." she whispers and steals a tiny kiss against your jaw.

The rest of the drive is quiet and seldom interrupted, there was something pleasant about that. You're not talkative at the best of times, and when you are it always seems to be to make others comfortable, to give them the illusion that everything is just fine. But now everything is just fine, or at least it feels that way, and so the need to talk about nothing seems redundant. Why speak when you can brush your fingers down her arm or let your gaze linger over her for just a moment too long?

God, every mile of silence became more exciting, more exhilarating for the sheer strangeness of it and then more wonderful because of just that. Clarke didn't need you to speak, she didn't need you to think of things to say. She didn't need you to answer to half-whispered _Miss Lexas_ all of the time or need the constant guidance of your low voice in turn. She needed your hands, both of them, the part of you meant for carrying and cradling, she needed you to love her with them. She needed your eyes on her, the parts of you that synthesized the beautiful and not all the time, but more often than not, she needed to be caught in their gaze. Clarke needed your knees and your arms and your jaw and your elbows and the skin beneath your ribs but she didn't need the constance of your voice and that was a great relief because talking tired you immensely.

You proved your proficiency with the other things though, you held the top of her thigh through the constant greyness of the highway and gazed at her longingly at every resting halt and allowed her to see the breath caught in your lungs when she smiled at you until all of a sudden the familiarness of Bennington welcomed you both with open arms and hours had passed by like minutes.

"Wanna stop for dinner?" you ask tentatively and swallow the inactivity of your voice, pulling the car to a slow halt outside a strip of small diners in the better part of town.

You haven't eaten in this part of town in two years. The last time you ventured along this small strip of restaurants it was your father's birthday and there wasn't a single parking spot available because every friend and family member _had_ to be there. You won't go in the same restaurant, you decide that immediately. And you won't go inside the one where you took Costia on Thursday nights. Or the deli place you and your mom went for coffee. That's how you'll have to exist in order to drag yourself towards process, dodging and working around the monuments of where they once lived, but you'll give it your best shot because Clarke deserves your best effort, no matter how messy.

"We've never been for dinner before?" her eyes flicker at you uncertainly, as if that fact was somehow missed upon you. "I don't think we've ever really been out in public together."

"We bought milk yesterday." you remind her a little too defensively, embarrassed in the truth that loud open areas and crowded public spaces were hard for you because they just didn't feel safe the way small and silent did. "We bought the milk together, I paid and you bagged it and the lady told us to have a nice day.." you blabber it all again, nodding as if that was enough public interaction for at least the rest of the tax-year.

"You're right, we did buy milk." she softly smiled and conceded, laying her hand over your own. 

Clarke knows the truth, she sees it in the gulp of your throat and the pinkness of your cheeks, and in turn you see it in the reflection of her cornflower blue eyes and want to melt in shame at the sight of it. She doesn't let you though. 

She licks her lips, "For a while it made me really happy that we just stayed at home. I didn't think I could last a whole evening out or even a trip to the movies, but then I got better because you helped me make myself better, and we could go home and I would be just as happy because you would be there, but if you want to try and make it through a wedge salad together I'm down for that too?"

"A wedge salad?" you turn up your nose and narrow your eyes. "Do I look like a small woodland animal?" you earn a wry little grin and a small laugh.

She leans in over the console and kisses you with both of her hands either side of your cheeks, it's gentle and light, she smells of your soap and laundry detergent and when the hell did that happen? When did she exist with you for so long that you both started smelling the same?

"Hedgehog." she hums, pulling away just an inch to stare in your eyes. You raise your brows at the statement because you have no idea what she's talking about, but that just earns another little chuckle, and in all honesty if being a tender fool earned as many chuckles as she's given you in the last ten minutes you would live in a permanent state of it. "You'd be a hedgehog, Lexa." she leans in and kisses you again.

You smirk at the sentiment of how prickly you are sometimes but somehow it doesn't feel as if she implied it that way at all. "Is that a compliment or…?"

"Compliment." she reassures you quickly and draws a small breath, "The spine is so strong, it holds you up and supports your entire weight and stops you collapsing into puddles, and you? Well you have at least a thousand spines." she kisses your nose.

You swallow a clinging film out of the tightness of your throat, for a moment, it hurts to breathe. It aches and it burns and yet it feels so good to draw in that breath, because past the silliness of it all, you do have a thousand spines, you must have, how else could you stay upright after everything? And somehow Clarke doesn't flinch away from it, your staunchness doesn't bother her because she thinks it's beautiful.

"What woodland animal are you?" you force a tiny smile in your cheeks.

"One day you'll tell me." she grins back and pulls away from your arms to fix her hair in the mirror, you miss the touch of her already. "Can I ask you a question?" she hesitates and looks back from the mirror. You nod and sag against your seat. "What should I call you in public?"

You pause and think on that, there were certain expectations on keeping up appearances in public. You almost forgot how much of a drag that could be what with your self-imposed exile from reality, but then again there was some fun to be found in playing Mistress in public, or at least from what you remember. It always seemed so silly, the formality of it, the lengths people went too to show a complete set of strangers a glimpse of their homelife, but you and Costia always had fun pointing out the flustered young masters or balking at the submissives in collars, which was something you both reserved strictly for the bedroom.

"You've called me Lexa the last few days." you shrug. "I like the way my name sounds in your mouth.."

"They wouldn't like that." Clarke swallowed and blushed. "These are fancy restaurants…"

"What would you like?" you ask and she hesitates.

"I like calling you Lexa." she nods, "I don't need Miss or Mistress in front of your name when we're together like this… not now."

"What changed?" you smile.

She doesn't answer, she just smiles and shakes her head.

"Come on, what changed?" you poke her side and grin.

"I saw the way you looked at me."

"What do you mean?"

"When you carried me to the bedroom… I saw the way you looked at me and I knew you'd protect me. And I knew I'd protect you too. Calling you Miss Lexa all of the time feels silly now… I don't feel like a guest around you anymore."

You smile again, because her words help you overcome the thickness of your scars and the scorched stains of your agony. You finally feel like you're doing something right. You finally feel like whatever this is between you, it's your own thing, untouched by the rest of the world and more perfect because of that.

"Come on," you unbuckle your seatbelt, "let's go eat."

You both settle on the little Italian place on the corner. The furniture outside is coated in a thick layer of wear and tear and the green umbrellas that cover the windows are faded from years of arguing with the weather, and the smell of the food seeps out into the street until the both of you walk right in as if it's second nature. As if you're just like every other couple tucked away in each private booth.

Clarke surveys all of it carefully, her eyes drifting from each table and the occupants who sit there. You survey her surveying, appraising each quirk of her brow and curl of her smile as the waitress shows you to a booth in the back. In the short trip from the counter to the back of the restaurant you learn more tiny things about Clarke. She won't look at the submissives in collars, she catches one in her sight and it forces her to run a finger around the crook of her own neck as a tiny reminder that she isn't suffocated beneath the proximity of one herself. The sight of couples sharing plates makes her smile though, and you know she envies the intimacy of it.

"Here you are!" the waitress grins and stops at the empty table, setting down a single menu and waiting patiently. "Would you like to pull her chair out?" she turns to Clarke with that peppy upbeat tone to her voice, eyeing her expectantly.

"That's quite alright—"

"No." Clarke gently halts you, pressing a hand into the side of your arm. "Of course I would." she smiles curtly at the waitress and steps around her to pull out your chair.

You stand there unsure of what to do with yourself for a moment as she drags the wooden legs across the tiles, fingers tight against the top of the chair. You see Costia for a moment, you see Thursday nights and the bistro place four doors down that used to be your spot, but you blink and she's gone, replaced by something much more alive and tangible.

"Lexa?" she lowers her voice and sees the hesitation in you. "Are you okay?" she whispers, eyes full of quiet concern.

Her soft voice was somehow still loud enough to earn a few curious glances from nearby patrons and the waitress herself, their judgemental gazes burning into you both, waiting to see your reaction at the way she used your given name so freely.

"I'm fine but thank you for asking." you reply and bury your annoyance at their intrusive stares. "Take your seat my love." the words slip off your tongue so elegantly.

_"Liberals. They're everywhere now."_

You hear the gruff snipes from the older couple sat at the table beside your own and the heat rises in the back of your throat, fingers tight around the cutlery, the very hairs on the back of your neck standing to attention as you fight down the urge to make a scene. It wouldn't be worth it, you promise yourself. Clarke doesn't need to see you behave in an unbecoming manner.

_"If I ever heard you use my name like that I would take my belt to the back of your legs right here."_

Clarke flinches at the words and you see the split-second of visceral fear flash in her expression like an old wound had briefly split open. It was a blur after that, you felt your fists tighten and your face practically curl inward until your teeth were on show.

You landed two punches on him, good ones too. The first broke his glasses and the second knocked the soup right out of his mouth. Fist wound in his tie, muscles pulling at your nose and jaw, the bravado left him like steam escaping the pot. "Say something else." you dared him, words slipping over the edge of your teeth.

***

You sprawled out on the bed in your sweatpants, flexing the swollen ache in the responsible fist like a puppy licking its wounds, your damsel pressed into your side with her ear to your heartbeat. Luckily for you the man who caught your punches was ex-military too, and once the police officer clarified your service history the accusations of assault were magically dropped. Apparently you just slipped on some spilled sauce, landing into him, twice. Needless to say you weren't welcome back at Papa's any time soon.

"Well… I think our first public outing went better than expected." you hummed and stroked golden hair out of your girl's face.

"Understated, right Ma'am?" Clarke chuckled, peering up your body with those soft blue eyes to meet your gaze. "Thank you for that." she arched her neck and pressed a kiss to your sore hand.

"Do you think they'll let us go back sometime? I got myself prepared for the calamari special." you huffed, wrapping one of your arms around the space beneath her spine that was just shy of her back.

Clarke chuckled again, lifting the last slice of pizza to your lips to occupy you. "I wish it had been me." she sighed.

"What?" you mumble through your mouthful.

"Throwing the punches. Being brave. Protecting my Mistress's honor." she teased the last part, settling her cheek over your breast. "I wish it had been throwing punches for you."

"No one fights for me." you lower your voice into the octave of your dominance, watching oceans of goosebumps run the length of her skin for it. "You are mine, Clarke. And I won't ever let anyone disrespect you, or hurt you, or upset you like that." you swell on the words, still angry about the restaurant.

"Can I…" you watch her hesitate, eyeing you slowly with eyes that were brimming with her submission. "Can I tell you something?"

"Please, my love." you nod.

"My mom left me a letter before she died. It was the only thing I had that she touched, and in it, she told me that good couples were like teams. Dominants were steam trains jolting along the tracks, and submissives were the engine room that kept them moving." she propped herself on an elbow and stared at you like you were the most magnificent thing she'd ever seen. "She told me to find someone worth being on the same team with."

"Did you find that person?" you whisper, staring back longingly.

"Yeah," she smiled that simpering little smile. "I sure did."

"Me too." you whisper, and it's one step closer to I love you.

 


	15. Chapter 15

“He’s willing to plead guilty and drop the court proceedings if the charges are lowered.”

You see the relief in Clarke’s eyes and that makes you even angrier. You try to hide it, but you can’t, eventually the pencil between your fingers snaps and Anya and Clarke are left staring at the way your heart clenches emptily around those words. No, you decide, until the judge’s gavel falls and he’s dragged away to a prison he’ll die in — you won’t rest.

“Miss,” Clarke whispers and ghosts her fingers over your knee cap. “I want to take the deal-”

“Are you insane?” you accidentally snap, and she flinches at the bark of your voice.

“Hey!” Anya bristled, “This isn’t about you it’s about Clarke. And at this point, it might not be the worst idea. Roan’s defence is centering around how the relationship changed after the-”

“Stop.” Clarke went stiff and quiet, as if all the oxygen was sucked out of her.

“What?” you look between them both.

“Clarke,” Anya encourages her gently, “does Lexa know about the miscarriage-”

“Stop!” Clarke snarls it this time and her body curls inwards like her heart is clenching around the evilness of that word.

You haven’t seen her like this, not since she first came to you. That’s your first thought until you replay Anya’s words in your head and recognise that operative adjective. That’s when the air leaves your chest. That’s when the stretchmarks on her hips add up to the equation of a lost pregnancy.

“Okay, it’s alright.” you make yourself soft and inch closer over your chair towards her. “Clarke, look at me.” She stays there, ignoring you, eyes cast and shuddering.  “Look at me, Clarke.” you whisper again, “Look at your Mistress.” you say that word so easily and don’t think twice about the gawking look Anya throws at you.

Her eyes peer up and you can see it in those sad pools of cornflower that she’s just not there.

“Baby girl…”  your voice aches in your throat, because how did you not fucking know there was a pregnancy? You’re going to punish yourself for it. You’re going to find a quiet time during the day and make yourself suffer for failing to find out the whole picture because you should have finished reading the whole fucking case file that night instead of pussying away. You didn’t. That is on you now.

“He wasn’t always bad.” Clarke’s voice is a scratched whisper. “Things changed, we both changed, grief does that to people.” she says it as if you don’t know. “He wasn’t always like that…” she sighs to herself, rubbing her cheeks.

“I know.” you promise and it takes everything not to overpower her with your presence. Instead, you stay in your seat and give her a little space — because Clarke needs you to love her in ways that always feel like a challenge and that’s half the joy in growing closer to her. But now is the real test, this matters, and you have to do better than your best. “I can’t tell you what to do this time all I can do is support your decision and protect you, and I promise you, I will, because we’re a team now.”

“We are Miss.” Clarke nods and a little relieved breath escapes her lungs, that Miss lingers in the air though, it feels strange after a week of Lexa’s and sweet little nicknames that have so very little to do with your submissive/dominant dynamic. It sits like a little reminder, because you are the dominant, and it’s you’re job to bear the load and guide her with your hands and make things easier when it seems like they could ever be anything but.

“Come with me, sweetheart.” you take her outside the room and away from Anya.

“Are you angry because I didn’t tell you about what happened?” she stares at her feet as you close the door. “I’m sorry…” she mumbles and stares at the ground and it breaks your heart.

“Angry?” you blink in confusion. “I could never be angry with you for something like that.” you soften your tone and watch her breathe a sigh of relief. “I’m going to talk to Anya in private and I’d like you to go and wait for me upstairs.”

“In your bedroom?”

“In our bedroom.” you remind her and kiss the top of her head.

She moves like a ghost, a barely-there woman slipping up the stairs towards your bedroom and it becomes a manual, purposeful effort reminding yourself that all things pass. Clarke is strong, probably stronger than you, and she has this knack for mending herself back together again when things have really earned the right to break her completely. It’s magnificent, and it’s sad, and it makes you want to be better than you ever were.

Still, you can’t help but stand there and swallow away the quiet knowledge that after six months you still barely know that woman at all. You lean against the wall and rub your neck for a moment, thinking of tiny bits of information that you do know — like the way she likes her tea, and the time she was six and jumped from the top of an oak tree and earned the raised pink scar that sits across her knee. But try as you might, it doesn’t make up the sum total of a person, and beyond curt measured exchanges and power plays and being her mistress, you want to know her… you want to know about the ugly things and the tragic decisions and the nights she didn’t think it could ever get better. That’s what love is, you decide, it’s wanting the ugliest saddest parts of someone as if every awful memory is a gift they could only ever trust you with.

“Are you coming back inside?” Anya appears and looks at you over the edge of her glasses, and it makes you feel like a child being summoned to the principal’s office.

“A miscarriage?” you say that violent word out loud as you follow Anya back to your desk.

You sit down first, pulling your glasses off your face and hunching forward with your head in your hands. The word doesn’t feel real. It’s sad, and the worst part is that it makes _so much_ sense, and you can’t help but feel merciless guilt for being relieved that the other shoe has finally dropped. It doesn’t alleviate the rest of your emotions though. You should have known about this… you’re her dominant and it’s your job to know about the important stuff.

“You should have read the case file.” Anya tells you bluntly, crossing one of her legs over the other and staring at you like a pupil who didn’t bother studying for the final exam.

“I had no business with any of this." you sigh, "You could have at least told me-”

“I could have.” Anya cuts you off and shifts, and it’s moments like this her dominance shines through in a way that feels like a challenge to your own. “Do you not think there comes a point where you have to stop feeling sorry for yourself and just take some responsibility?”

“Excuse me-”

“Damn it!” the desk jumps beneath her fist, “You waste away inside of this fucking prison and spend your days trying to find new reasons to punish yourself and in some small way it’s the most selfish thing I’ve ever seen. Yes, Lexa, you didn’t read the case study but frankly I don’t have the time, and nor does she, for you to spend god knows how long working through your self-loathing to pull it together and move forward. You should have read the case study, and you didn’t, and for once in your life can you just accept that and not take precious time away from her or this to waste on hating yourself!”

“Somehow that didn’t feel like the abridged version of how you feel.” you blink and swallow, unsure on what to do with her tirade but calm nonetheless because you won’t entertain a shouting match and maybe, also, possibly, she could be right and god that pains you to acknowledge. “It must be so easy judging me from where you’re sat… as if you could ever understand-”

“That your parents died? That Costia died?” she narrowed her eyes. “I understand because I was there. I was the one who told you the news, and I’m the one sat here years later wishing and willing you to succeed. I’m not asking to you to do anything more than give yourself a break… for her sake as much as your own.”

Scratching the back of your neck, surrendered and painfully aware that she’s right — you don’t know how to make the information settle in your belly because being angry with yourself is so much easier, you’re so good at it, and it’s so familiar and safe. You realise how strange all of that is the more you sound it out and string it together. You open your mouth and close it again, absolutely annoyed and aware that this realisation means another appointment with Raven.

“And for what it’s worth you’re both very cute together!” Anya says and shuffles her papers, still using that disgruntled tone.

“Thanks?” you quirk your brows, “I think?”

###

There’s a beautiful girl sprawled over your bed watching terrible reality television when you finally get Anya out of the house and make it upstairs. You blink, steadying yourself, reminding your brain that she is indeed yours and that this is your new normal, now.

“I didn’t like the way she spoke to you.” Clarke crossed her arms and her eyes were furious things. “Yes, I know, I shouldn’t have eavesdropped but I want points for not barging in there and giving her hell for speaking to my-”

“Stop talking.” you chuckle and shake your head, “Please, because I’m enjoying it so much and that makes it exponentially harder to be stern.”

“Don’t be stern.” she softly whined and slipped off the bed, padding over to you across the wooden floor with arms outstretched. Eventually they caught you, slipping around your waist and anchoring you both together. “What can I do to make you not stern Miss?” she almost purrs and you feel her fingers slip into your back pockets.

You roll your eyes and long for the days when she wasn’t so difficult to refuse.

“Clarke,” you gently pull her hands out of the seams, “I know you probably feel like you have to distract me, and as talented as you are in such endeavours, I’d be grateful if you wouldn’t.”

“But-”

“No, little one.” you put a halt to it and kiss the side of her nose. “I need us to talk, and I need us to be open, and you need those things too…”

“I don’t want to talk about sad things.”

“Really? You love it when it’s my sad things we’re talking about?” you raise your brows.

“That’s different.” she pouts at you.

“Why?”

“Because you bottle your sad things away and don’t let anyone have them, and my sad things are in black and white for anyone to see any time they feel like flicking through that stupid case file and that doesn’t feel fair. I don’t even get the choice.”

You’re stuck for a moment, biting your lip and exhaling a sigh through your nose. You love her with your hands, much more proficiently than you’re capable of loving with words or sentiment, they slip around the small of her back, the bit you’re allowed to touch, and you draw her into the cathedral of your chest and keep her there for a moment with your nose buried into fly-away strands of gold hair.

“You’re right, and I’m sorry.” you murmur. “We’re still figuring out whatever this is and the thought of you not having choices terrifies me. I want you to have all the choices and boring decisions and mundane options there are to have in a relationship.”

“That sounds like a lot of work.” you feel her smile into your collarbone.

“I’m feeling lazy.” you shrug and she holds you tighter.

“What do we do now?”

“Well,” you scratch your neck, “Here’s what I’m thinking. We’re going to get dressed and try to do dinner out again, and when we get home, we’re gonna take a bath and if you feel like it, I want you to tell me all the important things I don’t know about you yet. I want to hear them from your mouth for no other reason than because I’m the person you want to tell them to.”

She clings to you like you’re the only thing that makes any kind of sense in her entire world. “I love you.” she whispers, and you pretend you don’t hear it because you’re just not ready to say those words back, not just yet. “You’re good to me, Miss Lexa.”

It’s then you realise if there’s one thing that comes easier to you than hating yourself, it’s being gentle and good and kind for your submissive. She just nurtures that side of you until you’re a blooming garden of good decisions.

“Go into town with Indra and pick a dress you like.” you tenderly demand with a little smile into the crook of her neck. “We’re going somewhere special tonight.”


	16. Chapter 16

The sounds of hot water running in the shower and cloth hangers scraping back and forth in the closet upstairs is the crescendo of the evening chorus, the both of you running around and searching for the necessary accoutrements for dinner out in town. 

It was hot, that kind of awkward september where the afternoon couldn’t make it’s mind up and the weather stuck to your spine — along with Clarke. She followed you from room to room with her arms wrapped around your belly, her nose in the back of your neck, humming and kissing and pretending to be annoyed when you scolded her a little bit for the performance. Neither of you actually minded at all though. It felt nice having her hands on you, feeling her lips quirk into a smile against the clammy skin of your neck. It let you know that she was okay. That you were okay too.

She is a white Calla lily in-bloom. All golden hair and blue eyes; and they’re too blue — those eyes. They are magpie-navy, like long forgotten beer bottles rolling around the shore beneath the moon’s twilight. They’re too blue, sometimes nearly black in fact, and you like that because most of the time you can’t see the pain in her eyes; you can’t see anything beyond the majesty of magpie feathers and the slim Calla stems she wears for legs. You feel guilty for feeling those things, because despite your best efforts to convince yourself otherwise, she isn’t a Calla or a dainty daffodil rocking in the wind, she is strong, and resilient, and hurting and perfect at seeming otherwise, and quiet, and loud, and sometimes too brash and occasionally she is rude, and god, fuck, you love it when she’s rude — because it means she isn’t scared of you. She isn’t a Calla lily in-bloom, she’s the entire fucking orchard and no matter how many times she’s been trampled or dampened by the weather, she is so beautiful. 

Too beautiful.

“You’re doing the thing again.” she pouted, pulling a dress over her shoulders that she arrived back with from town a few hours ago, a black jersey one with a tight hem around the waist. Costia would never wear something like that, and you love it all the more because of that reason. The material clings to her in all the right places and it makes you swallow, keeping yourself in check because the tempestuous Mistress who lives in your soul wants to kickstart your bones and put her over the bed.

“The thing?” you cock a surely brow and keep a hold of yourself, barely.

“Where you stare at me and pull your lips inside of your teeth, Miss.” she blew a piece of hair out of her eyes and then grinned. “I think it means you like me, although it could just be that I have something on my face. Do I have something on my face?” she knitted her brows together.

You quickly put a lipstick mark on the side of her jaw, “Now you do, pretty thing.”

“Mature.” she chuckled.

“I’m thinking Italian? Thoughts?” the prospect of it sits better in your stomach against the alternatives; Greek food feels too celebratory, Lebanese feels too depressing, shawarmas feel too casual, but Italian feels just right. It sets the tone for how the evening needs to go, not too much pressure, casual yet formal, and it leaves you both open for the kind of conversations that need to be had.

“Fine by me,” Clarke smiled softly and traced her hand up your forearm, hesitating briefly at your elbow with a furrowed look on her brow. She glances up at you, chewing the side of your mouth. “I’m not sad about what happened.”

“We don’t have to talk about it now…” you promise quickly, cautious and also a little uncomfortable because you are absolutely unprepared for this conversation she’s now winding you with.

“I’m not sad about what happened. I’m not maimed. I’m not a long list of faults you have to fix and I want you to know that, because, it’s… it’s a big thing to hear, you know? that there was a pregnancy and it didn’t work out and I need you to know that those wounds are healed. I paid my penance for it and I don’t want to re-open those scars, Miss. I just don’t. And I know you want to make Mast-” she hesitates. “Roan. I know you want to make Roan pay, but if the means to the cause is threshing out every old wound and defending myself, re-living decisions from a life that feels too long ago to have ever been mine anymore, is the price of that? Then yeah, I would rather let justice just be a happy boring life with you.”

“I’m trying to understand.” you sigh and rub your neck. “I am… really.”

“You don’t have to work through it all right now, we’re a train remember.”

“Chugging along the tracks,”

“Together,” she adds with a smile and slips hands behind your neck. “And for what it’s worth, I really like that the word together now means you and me, long-hauling it, and we’re just at the beginning of all of that. I want to enjoy it. I want to see where the tracks lead us.”

She’s right, and you wish that she wasn’t, and in some ways you tell yourself she’s wrong, but who are you to tell her what is best for her right now? Maybe you should. Maybe that is what it means to be her mistress, but above that, your father’s tutelage is at the forefront of everything and if you cannot listen to her needs and make good of them, then of what use are you? It’s a fine line. A treacherous one. You decide there’s no harm in taking your time to feel it out, letting Clarke make decisions for herself is not a privilege but rather an innate right and perhaps, if you have the stomach for this rollercoaster, now is the time to put theory to practice.

“I don’t understand you sometimes, but I’ll get better with each attempt, and I will listen and support you, but do not ask me to bite my tongue.” you hum and dip your nose into her collarbone. “Is that acceptable?”

“Perfect.” she sighs and tames you.

###

The second attempt at dinner is better than the first, much better, effortless in fact. She calls you Mistress in public and there’s a prideful way, full of colour, in which she says it as if that nomenclature is a trophy she can raise high and show the world that the distinct privilege of being yours belongs solely to her. It’s prideful, and it’s comforting, and she wears your name on her tongue as if is an incantation to protect you both, but mostly you, from the invisible ghosts that whisper terrible things when you are away from the house and among the living. It works.

She deserves your I love you, and stuck in traffic beneath the open heavens of autumn evening rain, you want to give it to her but you just.

You can’t.

You just.

You’re _trying._

You long for it.

You’re not ready for that.

She’s quiet in the car, hands folded in her lap and eyes set beyond the rhythm of wipers on the sodden road in front. Mistress and submissive time was scantily found since the lakehouse and so you swallow away the brief lethargy of dinner in preparation of the evening, it isn’t a hard task.

By the time the front door opens you suck it up and take her by surprise because she deserves a beautiful reckoning, a magnificent overture, a reminder that you love her as she is, and she is not a ghost but rather a beautiful woman with soft edges that you so desperately want to lay your mouth upon.

“What do we do if you want something to stop?” you whisper the prompt against the bow of her mouth with her hands pressed against the wall above her head.

“I’ll tell you I want it to stop.” she promises, mouth hung and eyes alight with desire at this new boldness you possess. “And I don’t, Mistress, please, don’t stop.” she slips her thigh forward tentatively against the seams of your crotch, testing the limits.

“Such a good girl,” you hum and chuckle, but then you set your fingers into her thigh with dark wanting eyes and release the tiniest flare of your nostrils — it’s enough to send her into a weakening puddle of want and astoundment that this is happening. “What is this doing here?” your voice is a low growl and you look down to the offending limb brushing against your core.

“Hopefully pleasing you, Mistress?”

“That it most certainly is,” you lean and hum against her ear, allowing the attacking limb to remain between your legs. “Does it please you knowing how much you destroy my painstakingly-built resolve?”

“Oh, definitely a little,” she bit her lip and tucked a piece of hair behind your ear.

She’s more animated this time, more eager to partake, less cautious, less nervous, and not at all afraid. It emboldens you, and there will never be an opportunity to slip your hands along her skin that will not be undertaken with the greatest reverence and respect for her limits and needs — but having her like this certainly makes the thought of fucking her the way you crave to fuck her a more possible prospect.

“You’ll tell me if you want something to stop?” you emphasise again, dragging your nose down the apex of her own.

“I promise Mistress.” she sets her warm gentle palms either side of your cheeks. “Am I allowed to kiss you now?”

“No.” you hover _just_ against her lips and smirk. “I want you to be my good girl and do as I say, and take everything I give you, and be thankful for all of it, will you do that for me?” you lean against her and wait for her permission to proceed.

“I want that, please, thank you,” she stumbles and you bite your top lip at how adorable it is seeing her trip over herself in desire for the carnal. “Just be gentle, please, Miss.” she reminds you of these facts carefully with a wavering breath and a silent need to hear it from your own lips.

“Only _ever_ gentle for my good girl.” you reassure her and kiss her neck and then briefly the top of her collarbone, “Always precise,” you leave one on the knob of her bare shoulder and she starts to melt, “And every touch thoughtful,” your lips touch the wrist you pull to your mouth. “And I will be so careful and good to you.” you whisper quietly and press a soft kiss against her parted lips. “Tell me, so I know you understand that?” you instruct her.

She pulls away from your lips reluctantly, and if you allowed her, she would stand there kissing you in the chilly corner of the door all night without complaint — but you gave her a tender demand and so she obeys you with eyes that search yours carefully, “Mistress will never hurt me.” she tells you raspily, satiated in that truth.

“Never.” you promise with a rare pure smile.

“But, erm, well,” she swallows on the words stuck in her throat.

“Speak,” you say softly and slip fingers beneath her dipping chin, “take your time, it’s okay, you can tell me anything.”

“She can spank me though… if it pleases her.” she blushes and buries a giddy smile, chewing it away and casting her eyes to the floor whilst you blink and process what she just said.

Did she say that?

Did she-

Does she want you to-

Shit.

“You are so naughty sometimes.” you roll your eyes and tease with a thin manicure of coolness to hide away the teenage girl in the back of your brain screaming wildly, because if you had to compile a top five list of things you were absolutely certain of, Clarke not possessing the desire for you to tenderly strike her ass in the midsts of lovemaking would be three of them.

“Your hands are soft and I bet you know how to use them...” she pouts and aches and earns a measured flex of your jaw as you nearly cave on how arousing the thought of it is. Emboldened and eager to show you just how brave she can be, you watch her swallow and find the words to destroy the last of your sensibilities, “Thinking about it makes me wet-”

“Get upstairs.” you break and have to stop your knees buckling beneath you.

 


	17. Chapter 17

Her skin is almost blue beneath the moonlight that bleeds through the crack of curtains. It’s perfect, the house is warm, and yet the blankets remain pulled over your bodies and there is something so much more intimate about this — about making love in this bed for the first time, with blankets hanging over your spine and clothes slung haphazardly across the room. It makes it feel cosier, and ordinary too. 

You never thought anything could feel cosy or ordinary again, and yet, somehow she gives you that so effortlessly.

You spanked her tonight, twice, and your hands weren’t quite as ferocious as you were tempted to deliver them, but it was still one of the most exhilarating things you’ve ever experienced. You took your hand to the smooth skin of her ass whilst she folded on all fours over the bed, pulling her panties down and delivering two almost-strikes to her cheeks like claps of lightning that were feeling particularly forgiving, then you dragged your open mouth with languid kisses right over the pink warm skin until she was whimpering. If you could bottle up the sound of her whimpers and keep them like fireflies in mason jars, you’d make it your sole goal to grow a collection big enough to light the street lamps outside.

Tonight, your mouth was once again reserved only for her hips, and her neck, and each nipple, and her lips too, and when her orgasm arrived on your palm it was her lips you gently coaxed into a long kiss whilst she sobbed her thank yous onto your tongue, with hands clinging to the back of her mistress’s neck.

“I don’t know how you do that.” Clarke mumbled in astoundment, eyes hung lazily. “Thank you,” she whispered and ran her open mouth against the side of your neck, smiling.

You remain collapsed on top of her, chuckling and pleased with yourself. It was a late hour of the evening, and grateful you are indeed to have wasted so many perfect hours between her thighs. It almost quelled the heat between your own, almost. That too would come, the nights spent with two shoulders between your thighs whilst she knelt in front of you — and beautiful as the thought of it is, you’re happy to wait until she is ready. More than happy-

Her hand suddenly delves inside the waistband of your underwear.

“Ah!” you glare and pull your hips back. “What the hell are you doing?” there’s a tiny snap to your voice, it stems from nerves more than anything, because you can’t remember the last time somebody touched you there.

Her eyes are suddenly wide, cheeks pinkening into that shade of horrifying embarrassment. You want to reassure her and tell her that it’s okay — but it isn’t. She has to learn to ask and not just take. It makes you angry. Furious even. The presumption that she can just… that she can just touch you like that-

Suddenly, the intricate cave system of all the lies you’ve told yourself caves in and buries you. It was never about Clarke being ready to touch you, it was always, inexplicably, about you being ready to be touched by another; by someone who is not Costia. It’s enough to make you blink rapidly and swallow a red hot heat in your throat, because this is another landmark of you letting her go. And god, it’s so good to feel that, to know that you want this woman in the way dominants want their submissives — but you also need baby steps too.

“I am so sorry,” Clarke is pressed into your chest, fingers hanging off the cliffs of your shoulders so you won’t leave again. “So, so, sorry. I am so sorry Lexa.” she croons your name and pulls you back from the edge of that almost-episode. “I should have asked, and I should have respected you, and I am sorry.”

“Mistress,” you swallow and remind her that you’re still in-session, and all of a sudden her eyes haze with relief. “Tomorrow morning you’re going to write me a letter explaining why not asking for permission is wrong.” you lean in and tell her firmly, and with it, reclaim yourself bit by bit; both satisfied that you’re in control of yourself and her. “Is that acceptable?” you look her up and down.

“Yes ma’am.” she whispers back guiltily.

You cant your hips forward and close your eyes, relieved by the satiation her thigh gives your brushing core. “You could have asked,” you smirk and bite your lip. “If I had known…”

“I’ve been trying to tell you.” Clarke mumbled into the vase of your throat, kissing and gently sucking the skin. “Can I undress you Mistress?”

You flinch and you don’t know why; it makes you feel so silly, pathetic even, but you soldier through and nod hesitantly, smiling.

“Would it help if just this once… I didn’t call you Mistress?”

“I don’t know if I can give you myself like that.” you tell her with a sigh and close your eyes, and you want this, you’re wet for it; but the last time someone called you by your name between your thighs you were a completely different person and though you’re trying to rid yourself of those ghosts — things take time. “I’m a dominant.” you say aloud, because it’s the most intrinsic cornerstone of yourself — it’s the thing that everything else is built up around.

“I haven’t exactly forgot.” Clarke chuckled and a put her hand over yours on the mattress, the same one that spanked her gently earlier. “There’s no shame in this, in needing or wanting, and I don’t need pretty names to know who you are to me.”

“Will you?” you raise a brow, embarrassed and small. “Can you just call me Lexa?”

“I was hoping you would ask...” she grinned into the soft underside of your jaw.

She asks permission to undress you at every milestone of clothing, your shirt, and your bra, and your underwear, and she says your name each time as if it’s a tiny term of endearment all by itself. Somehow, she is still submissive, and you are still dominant, and it unhinges you how easy this is, how much it leaves you wanting for more.

“Here,” you spread your legs and point to the warm empty bit of mattress, “Come sit here for me.” you bite the bottom of your lip.

“I want to touch you so bad.” her lips turn into an almost-giddy smirk, and god, her eyes are so beautiful like this — like two marbles glinting in the cusp of moonlight. There’s a mischievousness about her, a daring air of possibility, and she is drunk on the mere thought of touching your skin, on loving you the way submissives love their mistresses, and yet it’s so much softer and intimate than that. It’s you giving yourself to her, your skin and bones and fears and pleasure, and slowly guiding her ministrations until for a brief flash of a moment… you are nothing but hers.

You slip your hand up over her shoulder blade and lose it in her straw blonde hair, taking a soft fistful and canting up to brush your nose against hers. 

“What do you want, pretty girl?” your voice is a low growl, and you kiss her chin and the corner of her mouth to remind her that it is you, and she is safe, and you are _nothing_ like him, and you are nothing like who you were years ago, in fact, you don’t really know who you are… but you’ll figure it out. 

She’ll help you.

“You.” she aches, open mouthed and desperate to reach for you. “I want you in my mouth.”

“In your. What?” you blink.

She halts herself, remembering the rules of this game. “Please Lexa?”

###

Collapsed on your back and mouthing tiny delicate commands, your slow thighs spread and make room for the angel between your legs. It feels like that, heavenly and abstract, there’s tiny flyaways of blonde hair stuck on her face and the light sneaking between the curtains illuminates each strand into flecks of golden white until you’re sure, absolutely positive, that they’re just the joyful fading embers of stars that have lived well and came home to rest now. You imagine a tender god somewhere, his cosmos thumbs brushing the muck off of their cheeks whilst he whispers directions to this very moment.

“Careful!” you burst and grab her wrist; her hand is against your bare skin, fingers accidentally pressed into the divots of painful scars on your chest as she used your body for leverage. You breathe harder for it, acclimating and nervous. “Sorry,” you lick your lips and recognise the tiny flash of nerves in her expression, and slowly pull her hand off of the silver shiny scars. “Just, please don’t touch me there.”

“It’s okay,” she reassures you and dips down, hands pressed into the mattress either side of your waist. “I’m sorry.” she nuzzles your cheek. “Really, I didn’t mean to hurt you…”

“Can you just kiss me already?” you shake your head and smile, slipping hands around the smaller portion of her back that you’ve been allowed to touch over these last few weeks — a careful step in the right direction. “because it’s midnight and you’re naked in my bed touching me and if you don’t kiss me… I won’t make it to sunrise.”

“Alright,” Clarke murmured and cupped your cheeks. “Dramatic, but alright.”

She kisses you gently, and you take the lead — hands tilting her cheeks until she is at the desired angle. She is tentative in her movements, careful to make sure each one is pleasing to her mistress, and you let her know how good she’s doing: a thigh slung over the small of her back, your throat canted into the air, groans dripping from your mouth. She earns it all with fingers that move eagerly over every bit of you.

By the time she is between the valley of your breasts, and then your hips, and finally your thighs, you barely cling on to enough of yourself to guide her. She is gentle with you, and you’re grateful because she is showing you how she wants to be touched; you gather from the way she teases with small gentle laps, until you want nothing more than to scream, that when she’s ready for you to make love with your mouth — she wants to suffer under your gentle ministrations.

“Okay, okay!” you burst into a desperate kind of laugh and you feel the sheer joy exude from her that she won, that she got her mighty miss to bend for her. “Enough teasing.” you huff and groan.

“Will you tell me what you like and don’t like?”

“Believe me, you’ll know.”

Two pale hands slip over your hip bones and hold you so gently, her mouth coming undone from one long stroke that leaves you breathless. “How Lexa?” she peered up at you curiously, smiling and very aware of the game she was playing.

Eyes alight, you relax into your dominance in a way that feels as safe as it does exhilarating — because you are beneath her touch, and you are at her mercy, and like this you can snap and growl and push back in a way that turns you on even more because, mighty as you can be, she is the one in control. You slip a hand in the back of her hair and push your hips down, eyes closed and moaning. “Because when I’m not pleased… I definitely won’t be doing this.” you almost ride her.

“I love you.” she sighs helplessly, kissing and sucking until your bones feel conceptual at best.

“Say it again.” you break, clenching your teeth and your fists. 

She is more than talented at this game, and if you didn’t know better you’d swear she had ample practice — she gathers every drop of you on her tongue until you want to whimper. “I love you.” she whispers, sucking you into her mouth with a smile you can feel against your flesh.

“Again.” you softly demand, eyes closed and close.

“I,” she starts at the bottom, drawing her tongue gently over your lips whilst your thighs shake. “love you.” she finishes at the top.

You lose your fingers in her hair and draw her closer to you, guiding her and whispering tiny things on the top of your tongue and unable to synthesize anything but the gentle ministrations between your thighs. Her hands slip over your breasts, and she is so careful not to touch you near those scars, so careful to keep you in this state of perfect nothingness right on the cusp of her tongue.

“You’re so beautiful.” she groans into your flesh as if she can’t keep those words down in her belly.

You get ready to brush it off but she doesn’t give you a chance, she kisses you over the most sensitive spot of your body, licking and sucking and rendering you useless, and all you can do is gasp and lift your hips.

“Such a good girl,” you mumble and the breath catches in your throat. “You’re so good, keep doing that for me...” you promise her and feel your hips begin to work in that automatic rhythm.

She makes you cum quickly, and yet she savours every second of you on her tongue; dragging out your orgasm for her own enjoyment whilst you grab her loose bun and buck into her mouth inelegantly, and seeing her chin wet with the sum total of your arousal nearly alights you all over again, collapsed and huffing in the sheets while you try to figure out what just happened.

Reluctantly, slowly, it dawns on you. 

Clarke isn’t Costia. She isn’t, and it's okay.

“I love you too.” you blurt as she crawls up, settling on top of your breasts.

“Lexa?” her eyes suddenly fix; unsure and certain, simultaneously, on what she just heard tumble out of you.

“I’m in love with you too.”

 


	18. Chapter 18

The sky was still pink out when you left this morning. It was the cool hour of barely-there daylight with the whole world still asleep outside. Perfect. You kissed me before you left, promised you’d be home before dinner — you said something about visiting with your editors, telling them you’re ready to work again, possibly something about Raven too. It’s difficult to pay attention when you’re wearing a shirt and slacks, delicious, but difficult.

Ten minutes after seven, the doorbell rang. It was urgent, unrelenting, the chimes ringing again and again as if whoever was on the other side didn’t have the time to waste. I slipped downstairs with your silk robe wrapped around me, fastening the sash just enough to maintain a little dignity. Smirking the entire time, I knew what would greet me, a puffed up pink-cheeked huffing beautiful you, bristling and complaining with the car out front still humming away because you’d forgotten one thing or another.

The stairs were leaped down two at a time just for the tiny victory of being the one to catch you compromised like that, just to be the one to kiss your nose and push a lunchbox into your chest whilst you mumble little excuses. I don’t remember when we became domestic and comfortable like this, I think maybe some time after the lakehouse, but whenever it was — it changed my life for the better. I don’t remember the frightened shell of the girl who pretended to be me for that short stretch of time, all of it is replaced with the overwhelming joy of recent months. All of it is tidied away and put on shelves that grow dustier each minute spent with you.

And there is something so freeing about being yours, and in turn, knowing you’re my bruised and trying little dominant. There is something so light and warm, and effortless, about saying your name out loud and knowing there is no need for pet names or formality, because what we have feels too good, too different for any of that. Too new for the old.

By the time the last step is cleared, the doorbell still sings and it’s enough to have me looking around for your keys already, or whatever it is you’ve forgotten. It earns a smile, a big one. For a second I tempt the idea of leaving the robe on the floor, exactly where you seem to like it the most, but it would only earn the stern eyebrow-raised promise of a beautifully crafted little punishment tonight. As gentle as you are, you’re still frustratingly and wonderfully you.

It takes six steps from the staircase to the grand oak front door, and between monuments the rasping of your knuckles against the wood begins. It’s loud, it’s fast and urgent and not delivered by the hand of a woman with time for games.

“Alright, alright,” I roll my eyes and check myself, opening the door. “Miss I can’t see your keys or phone-”

“Clarke?”

No. No, this isn’t. This can’t. It can’t be happening.

“Clarke,” we lock eyes, and his are relieved, enough so that he lets out a little sigh. “I was hoping you would answer,” Roan shook his head and rubbed the back of his neck.

It sends the vomit careening for my throat, sends the weight of this entire house crashing into the tops of my shoulders until it feels impossible to stand upright on both legs. I won’t fall. I won’t bend. I won’t break. I stand taller for it, terrified as I am.

“Wh-why.” I stop and swallow the stutter, force myself to meet his stare instead. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“Clarke-”

“Leave!” the words leave as a broken noise instead of a hiss.

Hands around the handle, the door is sharply pushed closed but his boot makes a move for the frame — and I wish I could be strong. Unbending. Unbreakable. Unphasable, but suddenly the shelves snap off their hinges and every dusty jar is shattered until all I am is a pile of bones in a threadbare shirt too frightened to breathe.

“I just want to talk, that’s all, just talk,” he says it calmly, pretending to be a man I don’t seem to remember. “Please, Clarke?”

“There’s nothing to talk about-”

“I’m sorry.” the words leave his chest urgently. “I don’t want to ruin your happy life anymore than I already did, and I know I don’t deserve forgiveness, I know I don’t, but I’m here to talk about something so much more important than you.”

Somehow those words still sting.

He seems smaller, scruffy and unkempt and so unlike the monster I made in my head. It’s easier to hate him in the quietness of thought, easier to make him inhuman and mythical, like the monsters trapped away in parchment in your library. It takes eight seconds to swallow the vomit. Eight seconds to decide I am more than a pile of bones in a threadbare shirt. Eight seconds to stare him in the eyes, if only because I refuse to give him the satisfaction of ten.

“You should go Mast-” I stop, hating myself for nearly saying that word out of habit. But I’m not that frightened girl anymore. I’m not, if only because you make me stronger. “My Mistress is good, and she loves me,” I stare him in the eyes and say those words out loud like a threat. “A lot. And she doesn’t hurt me, or scare me, except for when she wants to protect me… when she wants to protect me I feel my entire stomach catch on fire because I don’t know just how far she would go to keep me safe. But I’m willing to bet it’s far enough that I would lose her forever. So I’m telling you, Roan, run away as fast as you can and pray she doesn’t catch you.” I bite and make the words count, and you would be so proud. I know you would.

“Luna’s pregnant.” he gritted his teeth and stared with that old violent fire, still as raging as it always was. “I moved on, and I met her, and even though I pushed her away every chance I got she stuck around and made me… she made me better, Clarke. She made me a better man and I love her for it. God I love her so much,” his voice shook in a way it never shook for me. “I love her and she is pregnant, and I won’t leave her all alone. I can’t. And if your fancy woman rains down every lawsuit her men in suits can conjure… I’ll take every single one of them if it means convincing you to let me do right and be a good man, just once in my life.”

“Be a good man for someone?” I gawked, “What happens if she loses her baby, will you be good then? When she’s grieving and heartbroken and trapped beneath the stench of everything you really are — will you still love her? Or will you punish her every day for failing at her one job?”

“Clarke-”

“Do you remember the night you made me kneel in the corner of the kitchen? You put me on that wooden floor and told me not to move until you said.” my shaky hands move to my knees, lifting the hem of your silk dressing gown just enough to reveal the faint white scars I had him to thank for. “You forgot I was there and came down the next morning, and for a minute you looked sorry, for just a split second you looked ashamed, but then you remembered I wasn’t human. Not to you at least. I was just a thing. A possession. A burden. You made me say out loud a hundred times that I deserved it, because I failed at my one job.” I find myself smiling, sad as it is, because there is a victory in this — in watching him crumble beneath the truth of it.

“I thought I was helping you.” he mumbled and hung his head.

“Yeah,” I wiped a tear and nodded. “Funny how we trick ourselves, right?” I try to close the door again against the arch of his foot.

“You will do this for me.” his voice suddenly changed, eyes fixing into that pitless darkness I remember. “It must be so nice living your cushy life, high up in your golden tower, pretending I’m the bad guy. I wonder what your Mistress would say if she knew the truth about you.”

“Don’t you dare threaten me!”

“It’s a promise, Clarke!” he lunged forward. “I will tell her everything, do you think she will stick around when she knows the truth?”

He was too fast, and I was too slow, and I’m sorry Mistress. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. I wish the thought of you was enough to make me unmoveable and unafraid, but I feel myself cave in — because he is right. If you knew the truth… the thought doesn’t even bare thinking about.

“What the hell is going on!?” I hear Indra holler and fly across the hallway.

She saw him with his hand around my wrist, and it’s that fact alone that breaks me in two because now you’re going to know he was here and I know I’m going to watch you chase him to the ends of the earth and I am so tired, Lexa. So tired of all of this.

His hand is quickly pulled back and shoved in his pocket, “I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t be here,”

Indra is over my back with a carving knife in his face before Roan can get the words out. “You’ve got ten seconds before I start cutting things off.”

“Yes Ma’am.” he nods and dares a small smile. “Clarke, a pleasure to see you looking so well…”


	19. Chapter 19

You pull up to the house absolutely reinvigorated, running later than anticipated, but, reinvigorated nonetheless. It was a late dusky hour where the wind seemed to fade into pink as if it was trying desperately to impress the trees it ran through along the edge of the road, you couldn’t help but smile, it reminded you of mom.

Clambering out of the car, you imagined the apology you would have to dig deep for. It was black and white. Clarke didn’t care for the pink wind or the brooding editors lined like soldiers in the boardroom, bristling and mumbling among themselves that a Woods was finally back at the top again. Rare as it was, you afforded yourself this… twenty minutes late was fine.

By the time you entered through the front door you knew something was wrong. There was no sound of feet skipping the steps two at a time to greet you. You’ve been here before, haven’t you? With Costia and your family. It sends your stomach careening into your lungs until you’re not sure which organ you’re breathing with anymore, or if you’re even breathing at all.

“Clarke?” you call out hesitantly.

It’s Indra who answers to the name, swallowing and stuck with her hands behind her back at the bottom of the hallway by the kitchen door she appeared from. She cuts a slow-moving figure, clearly still in thought about what she will say and how she will word it. You wish she’d get it over with. You know something is wrong.

“Miss Lexa,” she nodded her head and breathed. “I think you should come with me.”

“Tell me, now.” you demand, completely without the time for these games.

“Miss Lexa-”

“Just tell me what’s wrong!” the guilt for snapping comes quickly, but still, you stand there huffing on your breath as if there isn’t enough of it to satiate you. Palms sweating, weak-kneed, you repeat every one of Raven’s crucial lessons in your head — forcing yourself to remain calm. “Will you _please_ just tell me?” you correct yourself but the urgency remains.

You hear the words and yet somehow they don’t stick. Mindlessly you follow Indra upstairs absent of any thought at all. The feeling is crushing, you feel it squeezing either lung until your breaths are enough to have the staff trying not to eye you in obvious concern.

He was here in your house, in broad daylight that man came to your house and threatened your beautiful girl. He stood there, hands wrapped around her wrist, and you didn’t protect her. You were too busy with your boardrooms and sunny day to even check your phone. It’s enough to make you stop at the top stair and gather yourself for a moment, because Clarke cannot see you like this, she cannot think you are angry with her.

Furious as you are, it’s directed at one person in particular.

And you are going to kill him.

Inside the warm darkness of your bedroom, a lathe of a girl kneels by the foot of the bed, eyes closed and muttering to herself with wound-up fists. Stuck in the truth of it, you still try to deny to yourself that it’s Clarke. That your frustrating, clever and brilliant girl is on her knees chewing whimpers off of her tongue.

“I tried to talk to her but… nothing. She’s been up here all day.” Indra saddles beside you and mutters quietly in your ear. 

It makes you feel worse. You should have been here. You should have protected her. You should have protected them. He could have killed her, he could have hurt her and you would have been a dozen miles away caught in a fucking sunset.

You force Indra’s words down into the steel-clad resolve of your stomach because you are no use to Clarke a pitiful mess. Licking your lips and nodding, you swallow, nodding one more time for good measure. “Leave us,” you say it with a steady kind of determination and the mere act of trying to sound as if you know what you’re doing is half the battle won.

Indra leaves, and suddenly, you’re alone with her — and just like the first time she stood quaking in your office, you have no idea what to do.

“Clarke?” you step towards the foot of the bed.

“Sorry,” she mumbles through the dryness of her throat and you hear that visceral ache in the long dripping moment of her apology. It damn well nearly kills you. “I, I didn’t, I didn’t mean to,”

“Stop.” you softly demand with a tender kind of authority, you move closer and crouch down until you’re beside her. “Can I hold you? It’s okay if you don’t want to be touched, I won’t touch you if it isn’t what you want right now.” you hum as comfortingly as you can and resist the urge to push the tear-stained wisps of blonde away from her face.

She hesitates with her reply, but it’s your job to be her brooding and gentle mistress, knower of all things, master of the universe, and if only because of that you trust yourself capable of centring yourself as the calm and steady force in her life without the need to touch her with your hands or love her with your body.

“I’m not going to touch you little one, it’s okay, it’s alright.” you whisper quietly and kneel beside her instead — watching her deflate with relief. “We’re going to sit here until you’re ready to talk. There’s no hurry, we can sit here for as long as we have to, but I want you to tell me what happened okay? This isn’t your fault, you’ve done nothing wrong.”

“It is my fault.”

“No.” you tell the hunched up daffodil beside you a little sterner. “Am I a liar, Clarke?”

“No Miss Lexa.”

“Do I ever lie to you?”

“No Miss Lexa.” she says the words like an exhaled breath and relaxes into the strength of that name.

“So when I tell you it’s your not your fault and you haven’t done anything wrong, is it likely that I’m mistaken?” She hesitates nervously at that and so you change tact with a lick of your lips, slowly, you lean against the bottom foot of the bed so you’re within her line of sight. “Tell me what you are, Clarke?” you softly order.

She hesitates again.

“Please, I want you to do it for me and tell me what you are.”

“Your good girl.” she inhales the sentence and lets it thicken inside her bones until she kneels a little straighter for it.

“Such a good girl for me.” you whisper approvingly, smiling and holding the fury in your stomach down. Expertly, you make yourself a soft and tender mistress for her, but on the inside your stomach is brimstone and your blood is molten. You can taste his plea for mercy on your tongue already — and by the time you are done, he will know the weight of his mistakes.

It takes a moment, in fact longer than that. It feels like an entire lifetime, and all you can do during the interim whilst she makes herself brave for you is hold yourself together and be strong and collected — if only because that is what she needs from you. Hopelessly in love as you are, unequipped and always trying, you’ll do whatever is best for her.

“He came to the house.”

“Mmhm,” you hum and let her breathe.

“He asked me to drop the case, said he’s in love now, expecting a baby too.” she rolls her eyes and then closes them. “I know you think you know what happened already…”

“I know he put his hands on you.”

“He didn’t.” she says it too quickly, swallowing. “I mean, he did, he grabbed my wrist,” she lifts it slowly, as if to show you there’s no bruising, though it doesn’t matter. He touched her. His hands were there, on a wrist that belongs to you, is yours to kiss and hold and gently pin above the pillows — and his dirty calloused hands touched it. “He wasn’t trying to hurt me… he was just scared.”

“Clarke-” you settle your stare.

“Please, please don’t do that.” she says quietly and looks you right in the eyes, “You’re looking at me like I don’t know what I’m saying, like I don’t know what happened, like I want to protect him… and I don’t. I don’t want to protect him, Miss, but I’m not a liar. He wasn’t trying to hurt me, he was just scared.”

“Tell me he didn’t threaten you.”

She grows quiet, and your blood boils.

“It’s not what you think.” she cupped her face and shook her head, breathing heavier with the anxiety. “There’s stuff you don’t know… from before…”

“From before?” you raise a brow.

“Before I came here, before I was with you.” Clarke clarifies.

“Then tell me, you know you can tell me anything.”

“No, not those things.” she stiffens, “Please, I know you’re trying, and I know you want to understand, but if you knew that stuff it would change everything. You wouldn’t be you anymore, and I wouldn’t be me, or at least the me I am now. And I really, _really_ like the me I am now. I love her, Lexa. I love her because she isn’t afraid and she’s smart and she’s allowed to be a little broken on her bad days without it making her a total mess of a person and I need to be her. Please, don’t take that away from me.”

“You make it impossible to argue with you.” you slump and groan, aware that this can’t be the end of the discussion though you would love to do just that. It would be so much simpler if you could end this chapter and skip to happily ever after, but life doesn’t work that way, and you know that better than anyone.

“I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want interviews with Anya, or court dates, or the thought of you sat there listening to everything… to the total truth of it. I just want a happy ending… with you.”

“Clarke-”

“Please?” the tears in her eyes pearl up like precious stones, and you are a pathetic mess of a woman caught in the gaze of them. You have to be strong, you have to do the right thing, and yet you can’t.

“Okay…” you hang your head and nod, settled on what you’re going to do now. “If this is what you want.” you stop and recalibrate, slightly annoyed but stuck in the memories of lessons your father taught you well. “If it’s what you need, I’ll make it go away.”

“I don’t want you to get in trouble-”

“I won’t.” you lie and comfort her, the little sigh escapes your mouth next and you can’t help but give her a tiny smile. “Can I touch you now? I want to hug you, and hold you, and kiss you, and also, maybe, touch your butt by mistake.”

“Touch my butt by mistake?” Clarke smirks and the world is finally off of her shoulders.

“It’s such a great butt,” you pout and smirk too, “how could I not scoop it up?”

You do just that as her slow-moving body finally shuffles over and sinks into your chest. It’s a strange feeling, holding her beneath your chin, feeling her arms slip around the small of your back, her heartbeat punching against the rhythm of your own while you try to make sense of how this might be the last time you’ll get to hold her like this.

“Promise my big bad mistress won’t do anything stupid, like, go over there and start something?”

“Watch it pretty girl.” you murmur gently into the flyaways along her hairline and she mouths a tiny throwaway apology for insolence against your collarbone. “But no, your big bad mistress isn’t going to start something…” you earn a relieved little chuckle from her.

You feel guilty for the lie, but you tell yourself it’s the truth. You make yourself believe that she will understand that what you’re going to do is for her. You force yourself to settle the knowledge in your stomach that whatever happens, Clarke will be okay, Anya will make sure of it, and even if you’re not around — she will be just fine because you’ve made her well and they’ll be no more Roan to worry about.

You’re not going to go over there and start something… you’re going to go over to the Winters’ place when she falls asleep, safe in your bed, and you’re going to finish something you should have done months ago.


	20. Chapter 20

It was the silence that tormented you. The quiet. The absence of sound between each one of Clarke’s snores that kept you restless and waiting. It was ten o’clock, still early enough to do what you must and get home in time for her to be asleep and none the wiser. 

It wouldn’t remain that way. You were vengeful, not stupid. Your door will be the first the police come battering against but if you’re quick, and if you’re good, maybe you’ll have a day or two with her. Just a little peaceful time between the end of this chapter and the beginning of her new one to do the things ordinary lovers do.

When you climb out of the bed her hand automatically searches the empty warm space for you, brow furrowed and snores paused. You close your eyes and hold your breath. She begins to snore again, and with that you smile and bend down to kiss her head.

“Forgive me, Clarke.” you mouth tenderly into her warm skin.

You mean it with everything you have, and it takes the absolute sum-total of your resolve not to break under the possibility that she can’t or won’t forgive you for what you’re about to do as you slip the gun from the side table into the waistband of your sweat pants. Regardless of forgiveness, this is more important. Clarke is more important.

The drive to the Winters’ place grew bumpier the further out of town you drove into the sticks. The hum of cicadas were loud, and that in combination with the droning radio still didn’t seem enough to fill the silence. It felt overbearing, the absolute devoid of sound sat on your chest and for the duration of the fifteen mile journey, you could barely breathe against the impossible weight of that silence. It let you fester in your own thoughts, drowning in the plentifulness of them.

You have your doubts, of course you do. Maybe you should turn around, maybe you should go home and let fate decide what comes next… but Clarke is too important for fate and so you drive on, hands shaking, the cool barrell of the pistol against your belly.

Turning into the dirt road towards that old house on the horizon, your military training kicks in. The headlamps are flicked off just in time to not sear silhouettes of conifers against the dimly-lit house; breathing a sigh of relief, you advance slowly up the drive.

“So much for happily ever after.” you roll your eyes and consolidate yourself.

Between the car and the porch, crouching and inching the distance, you fail at trying not to imagine your father. As if he is there, sludging through the muddy ground beside you, disapproving, shaking his head, wringing his cumbersome fatherly hands, you see him clear as crystal.

“Don’t you start.” you mutter to precisely no one.

It's Costia you imagine next, and that's a completely different kettle of fish all together. You imagine her smiling that particular kind of won-over smile, the kind she did when you were definitely stuck in one of your impossibly stupid ideas but she loved you anyway.

You couldn’t save her, and stuck beneath this wrap-around porch that feeling swells inside of your throat until all that passes through that Fjord in your windpipe is the smell of her softest perfume. You lost Costia but you don’t have to lose Clarke. You can save that one. You can save her.

“He probably has a bigger gun.” you sigh and look at your pistol.

 _Yeah_ , _but you have the bigger ego._ You almost hear her say it, almost. You smile anyway.

By the time you get to the front door, your mother practically answers. You imagine her sat in the broken swing next to the window, flustered and shaking her head. It was hard to take her seriously at the best of times, always dressed in pink and pearls, always cheerful looking. It's even harder to take her seriously now she’s not here at all — just a repackaged memory purposed as a last resort by the part of you that knows how terrible an idea this is.

Gun in your hand, shaking, swallowing, sucking in air like each inhale is your last, you watch the door handle rattle for a decade. Time moves differently out here in the dark. Each second is a month, each moment another opportunity to holster that gun and go back to bed beside that far-flung perfect girl.

No, you won’t run. You won’t crawl into a bedroom to hide this time. You can save Clarke. You can give her a fresh start.

The door is finally tugged open and with one pull of your finger, it ends. The gun goes off, the kick bucks through your arms into your shoulders, and two terrified brown eyes meet yours as they stumble backwards — hands reaching for their belly.

Suddenly it hits you… you notice that belly again, how round it is, pregnant, full of life, then the flowing material of a house dress around her buckling knees destined for the stained wood.

Oh god, oh god no.

You see Costia and Momma and Father all at once. Sickened, shaking, unable to move, rooted in that swung open door, you stand there and watch their hollow repulsion. Someone crept into your home and took them from you and you have done the same. A pregnant woman, someone's mother, and for a moment you imagine her tucking her other children into bed after a goodnight story cut short by rapid knocks to her door.

Are there other children upstairs? Are they going to come down and watch their mother die between the bannisters as you did? You gag on the thought and stuff your sobs into your stomach if only to stop them venturing from their bedrooms.

“I didn’t mean…” your voice aches and all you can do is stumble forward towards her, desperate to help and painfully aware of how unequipped you are to do so. “It wasn’t meant for you.” you try to plead and tug at your hair in frustration.

Panting on the floor, she splutters at first, gasping and grabbing that round stomach, searching for an entry wound that doesn’t seem to be there. On your knees you search too, rolling her over to check her back for an exit path — but still there is nothing.

“Did it miss?” her voice grew panicked and hopeful.

“Thank God!” you collapse forward and rock, grateful and suddenly stuck in the realisation that Anya must have replaced your bullets with blanks when you first came home from the hospital. The relief doesn’t last for long.

“Please don’t hurt me-”

“No, oh god no.” you shove yourself away and raise your hands defensively. “I, it… it wasn’t for you.” you say too urgently and tug again.

“You came here for Roan, didn’t you?” she crawled backwards and panicked.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” you try to say the words again but lose them to that fracturing urgency. “Please, I promise I won’t hurt you. I… I didn’t know... I thought he would answer the door and the next thing I know-”

“You nearly killed me!”

“They’re blanks.” you toss the gun away from the both of you. “I am so sorry, I’m so so sorry.”

There’s a weighted pause, you keep yourself still, barely breathing, jaw grinding, furious with yourself, waiting for her to call the police like she should. You nearly killed a pregnant woman and so suddenly the thought of using Clarke’s honour as an excuse for such a thing leaves you gagging.

“I know who you are…” she blinked and breathed. She was still sat on the floor, curled beside the bureau table beneath the hanging mirror. She looked so small and though you can barely look at her, you give a short nod of acknowledgement. “You came to kill him for her, didn’t you?”

“I have to protect her.” you slowly breathe, consolidating the truth of it.

“From what? The past? The present?!”

“He hurt her!” you burst, “If you knew the things that monster did-”

“I know them better than you do.” she said calmly.

She stares at you and you don’t know how. When Clarke told you he had a submissive, a woman that lived beneath him, you imagined exactly that. A frightened scrawny girl with dirty fingers and dark circles, a girl who looked more like the ghost of Clarke who stood in your library all those months ago.

And yet this girl isn’t scared, certainly not of you at least. Not now. She sits there, gathering herself, acting with the kind of calm strength that shames you even more. She's a wild looking creature — tan and alive with thick ropes of auburn hair that make her look more like a lioness than someone's submissive.

“My name is Luna.” she says quietly.

“Lexa, but you know that already.”

“Well Lexa. I’m not in the habit of inviting would-be assassins into the kitchen for coffee… but I get the feeling if I let you walk away now this won’t be the end of it.” she sniffed and pulled herself up, hands wiping the dust off her knees.

You blink uncertainly.

“You wouldn't be the first dominant to look at me like that and I doubt you’ll be the last. When you’re ready to get up off the floor, come into the kitchen and we’ll talk.”

…

There’s something strange about her, it’s a favourable quality though. She moves around humming to herself while she makes the coffee as if you’re an old school friend or a neighbour instead of a gunwoman. It’s a strange kind of surliness, and it reminds you of all the things you like about Raven and all the things you hate about Anya.

“You think he’s a monster and I can’t say I blame you, he was. On his bad days it's still there, the anger, the hurt, the stains of it that can’t be scrubbed away from his soul,” she swallowed and poured hot water into your mug. “You’d know all about that though, wouldn’t you?”

“Excuse me?”

“Pain has this funny way of leaving scars under your skin… and you probably know that better than most. It’s the only reason I can think why you would find yourself here. The fear of hurting like your hurt before.”

“I came for Clarke.” you reiterate.

“Yes,” she agreed softly and took a sip of her own mug. “But was it for her, or was it for the fear of losing someone else you love very much?”

You already know the answer and so does she.

“You don’t have to worry about Roan. He’s in the mines, will be until dawn.” she explained as you quietly looked around for symptoms of him.

“I wasn’t worried.”

“Considering you’re armed with blanks… I would be.” Luna murmured.

There’s the surliness again. You never were good at handling it, not from Raven, not from Anya, not from anyone. “You really have no idea of the things he did, do you?” you twist on it.

“I do, and I wish to God I didn’t but there is goodness in him, I’ve seen it up close and personal, and I know that it isn’t reason enough for you, why I would choose to be with a man like that. But if I believed sins were unforgivable then I would drown under the weight of my own.”

“Some sins are too big to be forgiven.”

“They were happy once, did Clarke tell you that?”

“You want me to hold it against her that she somehow found a few moments of joy?”

“Not a few moments, years of it. I saw it with my own two eyes. Then they lost a pregnancy… and things changed.”

“Grief isn’t an excuse for abuse.” you clench around the mug because if there is one thing you know better than anyone, it’s that. You have experienced more of it than most and still here you are — without the burden of a broken submissive on your shoulders.

“You’re right,” she tells you earnestly. “What he did was wrong, and it was abuse. You are right, but the journey between right and wrong is treacherous and people get lost along the way… he got lost.”

You can taste the vomit in your throat, suddenly you are drowned in the memories of Clarke’s spine. The way she hid food from you for fear that you would take it away. The way she curls and makes herself tiny as possible in her sleep so she takes up as little room as possible. The dampness of her tears, the beauty of her resilience, the grief of years lost that you can never save her from.

Before you know it the mug clatters down onto the table and you are a seething vile mess, “He left a map of his journey all along Clarke's back and I don’t understand how you can sit here and defend that man!”

“I’m doing it for you, so that you understand the truth. Not for him.”

‘What are you talking-”

“She tried to kill herself.” Luna blurted and suddenly you can’t speak. “After the miscarriage, after the hospital, that was the first time. She took his sleeping pills and thank god he came home half-way into his day to grab lunch."

The back door pushes open but for some reason you do not look, instead you are stuck inside Luna's words. Another voice joins the conversation, "The second time I was asleep downstairs on the sofa and I saw the water start to come through the ceiling — she was in the bathtub.”

You twist behind you and he’s there by the backdoor with dirty hands and his work jeans on. He isn’t what you imagined, he’s smaller, weaker looking, fiddling with the keys he tripped back home for. His hair is greasy and his eyes are full of remorse and for a split second you manage to register these small qualities before you see red.

“I know you’re probably here because I came by the house, and for that I’m sorry. I panicked and I made a mistake, a big mistake Lexa.” he wiped his sweaty palms. “I should never have gone to your home to talk to her. I shouldn’t have spoken to her the way I did but I was scared.”

“Wait, you went by their house?” Luna shot him a look.

“I thought I could talk Clarke out of going to trial… I’ve got you and the baby to think about…”

You headbutt him first, it’s enough to send him falling through the screen door in surprise. In the background, beneath the haze of your fury, you hear Luna’s screams. You care for none of them. Instead you follow on to the back porch with two jabs on his throat, the second was enough to wind him, and yet he doesn’t fight back.

An elbow in his ribs, and he doesn’t fight back.

Another, and still he refuses to hit you.

“What’s the matter?” you growl and flare in his face, “You only beat girls who can’t hit back?”

“Apparently so.” he lies there and splutters, hands by his sides.

Before you know it Luna has her arms around your waist pulling you off, and if it wasn't for the bump pressed into your spine you would turn around and slap her too. But you don’t, instead you stand and wait for him to stand too.

“Fight me like a man.” you demand and straighten yourself.

“No.” he slowly shakes his head, “I promised myself I would never raise my hand to a woman again.”

“How noble.” you sneer and wipe your spittle with your sleeve.

Slowly, Roan sits up and looks up at you. “She started hurting herself… I thought if I punished her, if I gave her that, if I took it out of her hands, she would stop. In the beginning I thought I was helping her and things would go back to the way they were.”

“You’re lying.” you shake your head again.

“The scars on her back? She did those herself. I came home and she had flogged herself until the skin was split…”

“And what did you do, Roan?” you seethe quietly and clench.

He doesn't answer at first, Roan just hangs his head and sighs for a moment. You can see the humility, the shame, the embarrassment exude from him and it isn’t enough. His sorrow is not enough to heal the damage.

“What did you do!” you burst.

“I made her count out ten more.”

Sickened and weak kneed, it takes everything not to vomit. It takes everything not to press the gun between his eyebrows and hope a blank round is enough to do it, but you have to believe that there is a reason Luna opened the door. You have to hold on to the iota of hope that there is a way to make this right that doesn’t end with you in lock-up.

“You found her bloody and crying, and you made her count out ten more?” your voice shakes.

“I did,” he says it sombrely, “I was a sad angry man and I did things that I’m not proud of. I did them because at first I thought they would help, and then I did them because they made me feel better, and if I could take it back, if I could make it right, if I could be the man I am now-”

“The man you are now is a coward incapable of facing consequence!”

“That was the only time I hit her, ever.” he pleads his case as if it could ever make it right. “The other times, the trips to the hospital, it was all her.”

“No.” you shake your head. “Maybe she did hurt herself, maybe that much is true… but what you did was worse. She needed help and you broke her into pieces. You took her food away, and you made her kneel until she couldn’t feel her feet, and you hurt her and hurt her and hurt her with cruel punishments until she wasn’t a person anymore. Not to you at least.”

“I am not the monster you think I am. I am a man who has made mistakes, terrible ones, and I should have protected her and I didn’t. That failure is on me but don’t tell me for one second you don’t know what it’s like to live with those kind of regrets.”

“My family was killed in a robbery gone wrong. I was shot twice, and I couldn’t protect them and I... I forgive myself.” you exhale, shaking and wanting to cry. The feeling is so palpable you feel it in your toes, and in some ways, it’s freeing to finally say aloud that you’re forgiven. You don’t let it last for long though, biting your mouth, nose curled into a snarl you lean forward. “I pray you never find a day of forgiveness for your mistakes. Not one.”

“I didn’t know he went to your house to see Clarke, I didn’t know that.” Luna says quietly over your shoulder.

“Well he did!” you snarl.

“And you came here out of fear and anger too.” she reasoned quietly, “If it wasn’t for a stroke of luck tonight would have ended far differently.”

For a moment you see it, the point she tries to make. In some small, inescapable way she is right. People are flawed, people are messy and dark and an amalgamation of their worse mistakes, and had Anya never have changed those bullets — you would forever be the woman who murdered a pregnant girl on her doorstep. And it isn’t the same, it isn’t comparable to what he has done, but you see the point she is trying to make.

“Plead guilty.”

“What?” Roan lifts a brow.

“Clarke doesn’t want to go to trial, she just wants to live. So take the plea deal and plead guilty and do one small good thing for her. Let her have her life.”

“If I plead guilty that's six years in prison,” he nervously laughed, looking between your face and Luna’s. “I’m sorry for what I’ve done, really, I am, but I have a family to think about-”

“And if you don’t face the consequences of what you've done what kind of man will you be in the eyes of your son?”

“She’s right.” Luna tells him too, sighing and aware.

“But the baby-”

“Crimes have consequence, and I love you, and I know you’re sorry. I know that, but this is your chance to do the right thing.”

It takes ten minutes and one phone call to a confused Anya, and then it ends.

It ends with you leaving with the promise that tomorrow morning he will turn himself in and take the plea deal, and with his word given, you walk down those porch steps towards your car and bare a split-second thought for how different tonight could have ended.

You never should have came here, and though you are glad you did, you promised Clarke that you wouldn’t. You promised her you would let these things be and yet you couldn’t — and selfishly it was for yourself, and even more selfishly, you forgive yourself simultaneously because now it’s done and yes, okay, yes. It isn’t a happy ending.

It’s not a happy ending, because happy perfect endings don’t exist. But fuck, the idea of you and her free at last to live your lives? It’s close. It’s 2am by the time you’re back on the main road towards Bennington, but there’s a place you need to drop by first before you go home.

A lock box containing your mother’s engagement ring.

 

 


	21. Chapter 21

The bedroom light seeped through the crack of curtain as you slipped up the drive home, it was enough to make you gulp and fiddle with the small box in your jacket pocket. You imagine her to be feral, pacing around the bed trying to make sense of where you are, trying to process that you lied.

It’s enough to make you nervous.

And so for a moment you stay in the car, leaning back into the leather, thinking of what you will say and what you will do to make it right. Sure, putting an end to this whole mess is a pretty strong lead — but betrayal is still betrayal. You promised Clarke you wouldn’t go over there and your word is your worth, and just because you somehow fixed it doesn’t negate what you were willing and prepared to do.

Slowly you pull the handbrake and reverse down the drive back out onto the winding road. For what feels like an hour you drive around thinking and doing little else, but you manage to text Clarke and let her know you’re safe and everything is okay. That’s the first thing.

Absolutely resolute, you know where you need to be right now. It could wait until tomorrow but it feels right to do it now, you’re ready to say goodbye, you’re ready to close this chapter and start a new one with Clarke. It feels right to do it now.

You pull the car onto the left turn in and head three miles down an endless tiny lane framed with trees and little else either side, then you turn right, following the road mindlessly until the sign comes into view.

And for the first time since everything happened you’re here, outside Eternal Gardens Cemetery.

The walk up the hill is dragged out to your aching knees and sweating brow. It’s a strange feeling, and though you’re apprehensive and nervous, you’re not afraid. If anything you’re happy. It’s strange to admit that, it’s strange to be okay — especially when that’s the last thing you thought you could ever be. 

But here you are, and you’re okay Lexa. It took two years, three therapists, countless bottles of scotch and one impossibly persistent girl who never once looked at you like an echo of tragedy but here you are, and you can’t help but smile, because sometimes being okay is more than enough.

It’s your momma’s grave you brush the weeds off of first and then your father’s. It’s the same plot but there’s two headstones. You feel guilty for not coming to see them sooner, then again most children do when they forget how long it’s been since they spoke to their mom. Still, the feeling persists and you decide here and now that you won’t go more than a week without coming to this place to lay pink flowers and tend the earth.

“Hi Momma. Dad.” You nod at his side with an embarrassed smile. “Sorry it’s been a while…”

You imagine them standing there, his hulking fatherly arm wrapped around her shoulder. They smile back at you. They nod along as you catch them up with the last two years and by the time you get to Clarke, you tell them what you’ve longed and ached for years to tell them. “I’m alright Momma,” you sniff and make yourself strong. “I’ve found someone now.”

If Momma was here she would grab your shoulders and rest her forehead against yours. She’d slip her hand down the back of your hair and tell you she’s proud. Father would be quiet, he’d nod in approval and tell you it was high time. You’d love him even more for that, the way he never really needed to use more than a few words to say exactly what you needed to hear.

“I’m ready to let go now, I’m not angry with myself anymore.” You nod and swallow, suddenly lighter for it. It’s one thing saying it to yourself and absolutely another to say it to your parents, even if they’re not entirely there. “One day I’m going to see you both again and I’m going to tell you about grandchildren who remind me in bits and pieces of the both of you. There will be so many stories, so much to talk about and I’m going to live my life and make it all count Momma. I’m gonna do that for you.” You rub the back of your neck and sigh the words with tears in your eyes, you wipe them away quickly, worried even the ghosts might see.

There is still one more person in this restful place for you to visit and truth be told it’s the person you want to see the least, well, not like this anyway. You always were terrible at goodbyes when it came to me. Though, still not as bad as I am at saying goodbye to you Lexa.

It’s strange really, when we were children, I never understood what it meant to belong to another. The intimacy of it. The love that goes into that devotion. Truth be told I never understood it in life, and I’m not sure I even understand it in death. Sometimes I find myself thinking back to that long drive from my parents home to yours, many years ago as it was. I’d known you all my life since we were children–always aware that our fate was already sealed–and yet somehow stepping out of that car outside of your home it dawned on me how little I really knew you, well, certainly not enough to spend a lifetime with someone at least. And god I hated you so much for that, I hated the imposition of my life somehow belonging to you as if I was something to be bought and traded.

I loved the way your face cracked into embarrassment and shame when I ignored your smiling face. I loved the way you pushed your food around you plate - too nervous to talk to me under the steely watchful eyes of your parents. The way you slept in the guest bedroom because the thought of lying next to me was too nerve wracking. I loved owning all of that over you as if I was the one in control. I think it was some months after that, around the time you began your commission at the naval college in the town over, that I realised something that changed my life. I began to love the little things about you that only I was privy too, and, how sorely I missed them when you were gone. The way you quietly left books on my desk that you thought I would enjoy. The pressed flowers you would hide between poems that caught your eye. The smile you did when you inevitably made me laugh no matter how much I tried to be cold and unavailable.

Loving you is the easiest thing I ever did, even on the days I wanted to hate you. You never made me feel like I wasn’t in control, which is why I chose to belong to you. I guess I just wasn’t ever that good at choosing to let go, was I?

You walk the long way around the cemetery walkway towards the family mausoleum. It’s a beautiful monument, white marble and gold detailing. From this point on the hill the daylight always touches the stone and the wind makes for beautiful melodies through the blossom trees either side. Those facts are for the living I suppose, I rarely find myself lurking around my tomb. It’s too macabre if you ask me, and considering you’ve yet to come and see me in two years I suppose you share that feeling too.

Nonetheless I watch you inch your way towards the monument, you straighten yourself and smooth back your hair and with trembling hands you reach in your pocket for a compact mirror and check your teeth. It makes me laugh loud enough to wake the dead – pun absolutely intended. You always did like to look your best when we were meeting once again after a long time apart.

It’s your hovering hand over the simple bouquet of almost-dying flowers laid upon one of the smaller graves below that has me throwing you that look you used to hate. Of course, you would forget to bring flowers to your ex-fiancée’s grave. Of course, you would tempt the idea of borrowing a few lilies from poor old Mrs Wojowski. Thankfully though you think better of it and stuff your hands in your pockets, mumbling a small apology to the dead and continuing your walk up the hill.

You are so beautiful like this, crying and sad and so very alive. It’s good. You’re allowed to be sad sometimes, but only sometimes. It doesn’t negate your happiness to be sad every now and then. I think to be sad is a wonderful thing because it means something good once happened, and you’re ready to let it go so other good things can happen too. I want to reach out and tuck that frustratingly sticky-outie curl of dark hair behind your ear and remind you of those things but, I can’t, I’m not here in anymore.

I suppose that’s a sentence that begs the question of where I am now, to which I don’t know the answer. I’m here and I’m not. I’m somewhere between the breeze and the pink at the bottom of the horizon when the sun rises and sets. I’m with you, always, and yet never close enough. I can hear your parents laughter if I’m quiet, and I can hear the sound of my grandma’s refrigerator opening and her hands feeling around for the lemonade jug right in the back. I know Heaven smells of my aunt Theresa’s cherry pie and that the warm air of the hereafter always tingles the back of the neck, but, Heaven can wait all the days of your life until I figure out how to say goodbye.

By the time you reach my grave we’re finally stood face to face again. There was a time I came to you in dreams, it was easier, you would talk to me and for a few precious minutes we met in a place between the ocean that separates us now. But then you said goodbye, and you meant it. You meant it and I should have left and took comfort that you were in Clarke’s tender heart now, and her in yours. Sometimes I wonder whether you see me out of the corner of your eye, whether you see me smiling when you hold Clarke to your chest and know that I am happy that you are loved. Unlikely as it is, I wonder if you hear me when I talk to you.

“Of course I hear you.” You whisper suddenly, hands dug in your pockets and head hung forward. “I always hear you and I always listen… but I never quite figured out how to talk back.”

“Well I’ll be fucking damned.” My jaw hangs.

“We said goodbye, Costia.”

“We really need to get better at that, don’t we?” I sigh.

“I am so in love with her, and I feel like I should apologise.”

“Apologise?”

You hunch and refuse to look up from the plot where my name is etched into the stone. “Because I’m going to love her in ways I never got the chance to love you, and I am going to cherish her every day of my life and grow old with her using days that were supposed to be yours and I don’t know how to reconcile the fact that I have moved on and yet still, fucking somehow, cannot forget about you.” You exasperate with frustration.

“Nah,” I wipe a tear that isn’t there and lick lips that don’t exist anymore. “You don’t apologise for love, okay? Love is the only thing in this world worth a damn. Loving is the greatest gift we give to one another and all we can do is humble ourselves before the enormity of it and take as much in our hearts as we can, and you, Lexa, have the biggest heart I’ve ever known. So be loved and love in return, it’s all I’ve held on for.”

“Death makes a poet of you.” A slow soft smile pushes up your cheeks.

“You think?” I can’t help but chuckle.

“Well… don’t get going all big headed on me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it Mistress.”

There was a time when that one word from my lips would be enough to make your entire earth spin. It would leave my lips and I would watch it run up your spine and caress your entire body, but now you just smile. It isn’t a particularly warm or excited smile, just a reminiscent faint smile of days long since past. It hurts but I remind myself that this is the natural order of things, you are her Mistress now, her dutiful master of the whole universe and she in turn, in some wonderfully tiny way, is yours.

I straighten myself and close my eyes, the sounds of refrigerators whirring and the smell of cherry pie has never been so clear in my mind.  I think it’s time now, no practice runs this time around.

“Well, here we are Lexa. It took us a while but we found that garden in the end, didn’t we?” I can’t help but laugh.

“So this is goodbye, for real?”

“You know, I think it is… but would it be so terrible if we said see you later instead?”

“Well, in that case Costia Green-Woods.” You dry your eyes and give me the best beaming smile you can muster. “See you around. I’ve got a girl to go and propose too.”

“And what a girl she is.” I whisper and wave you goodbye.

I watch you leave and this time I don’t follow. I think, in the beginning, I made myself believe I stuck around for your benefit. In actual fact I stuck around for mine. I guess in the end this was never a tale about you, but rather a story about a girl sat in a garden somewhere between right and wrong, who loved so much she never knew how to let go.

I suppose there’s a happy ending, because I now know that the act of letting go is much like the act of loving. It just takes the willingness to humble yourself before the enormity of it. And with the knowledge that this story whether it began as yours or mine is now Clarke’s to finish, I finally humble myself, allowing that warm air to tingle the back of my neck.

 

…

 

It’s sometime after one when your car finally pulls up the drive. It’s that quiet hour of the evening where every emotion is amplified into the echoing silence. I find myself walking backwards and forwards, clinging to my phone, making the promise stick in my head that you’re okay and I don’t need to worry.

I know where you’ve been, and I’m furious. I’m terrified and I’m nervous but mostly I’m furious, because you are too much of a good thing for me to lose. You are too important for me to even bare the thought of having you snatched away. You are the pause between every sentence that keeps me tethered to reality and I cannot stomach the thought of you going away now you know the truth about Roan and I. And I know you know the truth, I know you do because the truth always has a way of rising to the surface no matter how much we try to push it down.

The thing is the truth isn’t always the truth, sometimes it’s just the past, and the person I was during those dark days? That sad quiet girl who made herself believe she deserved all those terrible things? She is not the truth. She is the past.

Your footsteps are quick up the winding stairs outside the hallway and I clench around the sound of each one of them. The door opens, you stand there puffing out of breath, your green eyes full of feelings I can’t yet figure out.

“Clarke–”

“No.” I raise my finger and bite the inside of my lip.

I can tell you’ve been crying. You swallow and look at me for a moment, unsure of yourself and appraising me with those green eyes that are somehow capable of seeing everything. Please don’t speak, I will you in my head. I just need a few seconds. Just a moment to look at you and memorise what it feels like to have you as my mistress – just in case it’s about to be ripped away.

“I’m sorry.” We say it simultaneously, looking at one another in surprise.

“Clarke,” you say my name so softly, “I’m sorry.” You stress it again and step forward towards me. “I made you a promise and I broke it. I thought I was doing what was best and in doing so I acted as if your feelings don’t matter, and they do.”

“So you did go to the farmhouse?” I tense and close my eyes.

“I did.” You say solemnly.

“Did he,” I swallow and pray that maybe you don’t know those terrible things about me. That maybe you won’t think I’m unloveable. “What did he say to you?”

“Before or after I punched him in the face?”

There’s this prideful smile in your cheeks, it’s so big and wide and pleased with yourself. I have to bite my smirk because it is so easy to be pulled into the gravitational force of your good moods, but this is serious. It’s important and I can’t let myself smile.

“It doesn’t matter what he said.” You tell me earnestly and step forward. “I don’t give a damn about anything he has to say, just the things you want to tell me when you’re good and ready to tell me. He’s never going to hurt you again, Clarke, I’ve made sure of that.”

“Please tell me you didn’t kill him.” I find myself clenching again.

“No, nearly, but not quite.” You scratch the back of your neck and look guilty. I don’t press for details though, the relief of knowing you’re not about to be arrested is enough for now. “He’s handing himself in tomorrow morning, I watched him sign the plea deal. It’s more than what he deserves but it was what you wanted, so I got it for you and all I can do is hope that’s enough to earn your forgiveness–”

I think on an ordinary day you’d tell me off for interrupting you so many times, but tonight you don’t seem to mind. Not while I’m pulling at your collars and kissing you at least. Your cheeks are damp and I feel your hand slip around the small of my back, there was a time when that mere act would be enough to make me jump out of my skin. It’s different now though, I feel safe with your hands around me. I feel like I can do anything and be anyone and conquer the entire world.

I know that you know about the past, I know that he told you. Somehow you don’t seem to mind, somehow the promise that one day I’ll be ready to tell you about those times in my own words is more than enough for you.

I pull away and hold your jaw between both hands, and you are so beautiful Mistress. You are so tender and kind and there’s this gentleness that exudes from you until I forget you’re my Mistress altogether. I press a kiss to the bridge of your nose and one between your brows, your cheek is next, then your lips once more for good measure until you’re smiling into my mouth.

There’s this dilemma I’m stuck between each day. It’s the magnitude of all the reasons why I love you. There was a time when I loved you because I was terrified of being without you. I realised after a while that love like that isn’t enough, and that I had to find more reasons, better reasons, reasons like how I love you because you make me feel like a whole complete person. I love you because you never ask for more than I can give you. I love you because you respect me. I love you because you’re beautiful. I love you because you’re the smartest woman I’ve ever met. And I wish all of those things were enough to make the fact I also love you because I don’t want to be without you go away. But I’ve just had to make due with the fact that they live together side beside, maybe they always will, and that’s okay.

“I love you.” I whisper into your lips.

“I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone.” You tell me back and hold me tighter, and I cannot process right now the enormity of what that means. “Now that I’ve done something for you, I was hoping you might selflessly do something for me?” You ask hesitantly.

“Anything Miss Lexa.” I hum the pet name and tuck the sticky-outtie curl of hair behind your ear.

You pull away and look at me for a moment until I am stuck in the enormous rapture of your beautiful stare. You lick your lips, blinking nervously, and it makes me do the same. I watch you sink down onto your knees and humble yourself, your hand digging around in your pocket.

You pull the small pink velvet box out of your trousers and that’s when I realise.

“I locked this ring away because I never thought I would find someone worthy enough to wear it… but then one day I woke up and realised I was laying beside the woman I want to give my life to and now, this ring?” You open it, and I’m staring at your mother’s engagement ring. “Is nowhere near what you deserve from me… but if you’ll have it, and if you’ll wear it, and if you’ll be my wife, I’ll spend the rest of my life being the kind of woman who deserves to be your Mistress.”

“You… want to marry me?” I stutter.

“Only if you want to?”

I kiss you again, I sink right to my knees in front of you until we’re just two lost girls kneeling on the stones together once more. Your eyes flutter for a moment and you exhale in sheer wonderment, it’s then I realise I haven’t spoke yet, that I haven’t told you that being your wife was a fantasy I never let myself have because impossibly wonderful things like that don’t happen to people like me. Except apparently, they do.

I break into a grin and push my hand forward until you’re sliding that solitaire diamond past my knuckle. 

“I think that sounds like one hell of an adventure, Mistress.”

 

 

 

 

_[Thank you for all the love and support I've received for this story, it has been one of my favourites of all time to write and I'm so sad to see it go. I *may* possibly be planning a sequel to this story but for now I leave you with their happy ending.]_


	22. Epilogue

It’s five in the afternoon, still dusky and warm. Still that perfect hour of the day where the drive home is seared with that particular bright orange that melts into peaceful pink on the horizon. Class ran over by an hour or two though that’s nothing new. By the time the kids are finished asking a million and one questions about whatever it is we’ve learned today, and each of them are buttoned and packed up—handed off to waiting moms in the wings of the playground, and the chairs are stacked, and the papers on my desk are straightened into something that resembles order… well, let’s just say it’s not a rarity to be an hour or two later than anticipated.

You know that well, time-keeping has never been my strong suite, not for all of your expert training at least.

I can't help but wonder if it's so terrible that my favourite part of the day is remembering to check my phone and find that dreaded and eagerly awaited text message. The one that reads:

_Little One, we have definitely talked about this._

It’s an act of warfare that text message. One that I will never understand completely. You would imagine I was used to it by now, the roll in my stomach and the breath that catches in my throat. The way you make my spine melt with nothing more than the conceptual. Today there isn’t a text message, and I think there was a time where the absence of order and routine would be enough to make me nervous. It doesn’t anymore. I know all the fractals of you, I know every iteration, every angle, even the ones you don’t like. I know them all and there isn’t a single one that doesn’t think I’m the greatest thing since the invention of the nude pantsuit. You would never hurt me. I know that. God, I love you for it.

Still, the afternoon is dusky and warm—just enough to justify cranking the window down and letting the breeze make my hair and summer dress dance. The radio is turned to an absurd volume, the wheat in the fields roll against the sound of David Bowie in his heyday, if you were here, you would cringe. Well, you would cringe, and then my arm would drag around the back of your neck and pull you close, and you would relent and sing along and laugh with me.

Today is special though for other reasons too. Today is my birthday, and if someone had told me seven years ago that my thirtieth birthday would be spent in perfect boring domestic bliss with a Miss like you… needless to say I wouldn’t have believed them. You are the poetry I am reading, and every pause for breath in between.

By the time the car rolls up the driveway, I understand a little bit better why the mandatory text message was forgone. The front garden is covered in white flowers in bloom, they traipse and flow and move like a snowlit ocean. And there you are… right in the middle of it all.

“No, no no no, the one time you were supposed to be late.” You hang your head in defeat and rub your sweating forehead. The shirt you’re wearing is pushed up around your elbows, the caramel suit jacket no doubt tossed somewhere inside. There’s muck and dander all over your pant leg. It’s adorable, and no doubt frustrating for perfect tidy you. “Back, now.” You rush over and point to the gate. “Pretend you saw none of this.” The flash of your green eyes and grind of your voice warns of how serious you are.

“Be still my beating heart.” I grin at you through the rolled down window and pull the keys from the ignition. The handbag is grabbed from the passenger seat, and I jostle and climb out and press a kiss to your frowning cheek. “It’s perfect,” I hum and brush my nose against your neck. “Just like you.”

“I’m being serious.”

“I love it when you are.”

“Be thankful it’s your birthday, I could take you upstairs and put you over my knee right now.” You chuckle playfully through your frustrated exterior, there’s a sigh that lands right after. A kiss to my nose. A pull at my waist. It’s a quick and succinct rhythm.

I grin and kiss your jawline again, it smells of your perfume, and somewhere over seven years it stopped being your perfume and started being the smell of home, of my wife, of Mistress. “Firstly don’t threaten me with a good time, and secondly, it’s perfect and I love it… you really shouldn’t have.” I slip hands around the back of your neck.

“It’s not just for you.” You remind me with a giddy grin. “I want tonight to be just right.”

“She’s not even four yet, she won’t remember the flowers.” I hum and smooth a hand around the small of your spine.

You nod at that thoughtfully, and there’s a pause filled with a quiet kind of electric excitement. It buzzes around you, it tingles and vibrates and leaves a quiver in your heart that I can almost feel against my own. “Yeah,” you finally say, “But she’ll see the pictures. I better go and get cleaned up, I want to look my best…” Your voice trails for a moment, your expression ashen all of a sudden. “Shit.” You whisper under your breath.

I turned in time to see Anya’s car pull through the gates… and suddenly we’re in this together. My hand gets tight around your arm, and yours slips reassuring around the small of my spine. Is this how you felt when I first came to the house? Terrified and hopeful? Giddy and frightened? Maybe you did. Though if you did, you hid it better than I’m hiding it now.

“They’re early.” I say, blinking.

“They’re early.” You confirm with a swallow, dumbly.

The next few moments are a blur, Anya gets out of the car and grumbles some apology for being slightly early. Octavia is bounding out of the passenger seat with an overnight back slipped over her shoulder and a tiny pink coat… and then the back door opens and a tiny little girl with golden hair and green eyes clambers out and rubs her sleepy eyes. Perplexed, tired, confused, but somehow entirely calmer than I was when I first came to this monolith of a house.

Her name is Emily, and she’s our little girl now. Three years old but nearly four— which she loves to tell people, unruly and bookish, those were the words Anya used when she sat us both down in your study upstairs and told us about the little girl in her ward who survived a car crash and found herself all alone in the world with nobody to love her. 

‘We’re going to love her.’ I told you sternly and meant every word. ‘Forever and always.’ You squeezed my hand with a small perfect smile. I don’t think we’ve ever had such a straightforward interaction, and likely we won’t again. Emily is ours, and still here I am terrified, because one day she is going to call me Mommy and I don’t know if my heart is capable of containing that scary kind of love… still, we won’t know until we try.

“Emily,” Anya took her by the hand gently and brought her over to us. “This is Mrs and Mrs Woods.” She knelt at her side with a grin. “They wanted to meet you, very much.”

Emily starts to cry and hides behind Anya’s leg and the courage drains from you suddenly. Your throat gets tight and the words won’t come out, your fingers find the divot in the small of my back and almost tremble… and I know that it’s my turn to be brave for the both of us.

“Emily,” I make myself small and crouch with a smile, the brightest one I can muster. “It’s okay, you don’t have to be scared… it’s my birthday today and I was hoping that you would share my party with me.” I say softly with an outreached hand.

Slowly, two green eyes blink and peer from behind Anya’s leg; they’re curious and slow moving. I don’t mind, I know what it is to be patient, and for her I think I can spend my whole life waiting in the wings for her to need me. She doesn’t make me wait too long, slowly she takes my hand and shuffles over.

“My name is Clarke, and that,” I point up to your nervous ashen face. “Is Lexa.”

“Hi.” She says, barely meeting your awestruck stare.

“Hi.” You grin at her and the nerves slip off of you like morning dew. You crouch beside me and stretch out your hand, and hers is so small by comparison. It fits inside the center of your palm, pale and fragile. I watch you fall in love instantly… it’s beautiful to watch. “Anya told me you like books, would you like to come and see my collection?” You clear your throat and ask her nervously.

Slowly Emily’s eyes slip up and look at mine. It takes me a moment to realise that she’s waiting for approval, or maybe for something else. “Go,” I grin and nod to the house, “There’s thousands of them.” I tell her with exuberance and memory of the first time I saw the wall to wall bookcases.

“Clarke come?” She looks to you thoughtfully and squeezes my hand.

You bite your bottom lip and throw me a look, “I think we can make room, isn’t that right?”

“Just enough for the three of us.” I pat your shoulder.

Just enough indeed.

 

 

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